Yoga for an Ex-Ballerina: May 2017
Inhale.
The room seems suffocating in its heat at first, only eighty-five degrees, but it is January and over time I’ve forgotten how to sweat. My palms slide down the mat, the skin on my fingers pulling uncomfortably, my back bent in an approximation of an angle I used to be able to achieve when I was sixteen and my hours in the dance studio were equal to those of most people’s part-time jobs. The instructor has the kind of lilting kindness to her voice that I only get talking on the phone, and she, like a good seventy-five percent of this room, is lithe, graceful, sweet and ponytailed. I am dressed in a cut-off black t-shirt from a punk show I went to in Minneapolis, my close-cropped hair is sticking up in the back, and I feel too tall, too ungainly, awkwardly proportioned and oddly lumpy where I used to be muscular. She tells us to hold plank pose, hold warrior two, hold goddess pose, hold, hold, hold. My limbs shake and I breathe much faster than the smooth rhythm she gives in her instructions. Keep holding. I cannot hold anything. Doesn’t she know I’m weak?
Exhale.
Once, in a quiet morning class, the instructor reminds us that the pose we are doing is supposed to feel good. “If it doesn’t feel good, modify the pose! Figure out what your body likes.” This is a foreign concept to me. I feel like I’ve been tired, cold, aching, hungry, or sad for months. Maybe forever. I think my body might have forgotten how to feel good. I think I might not know anything that my body likes. Did anyone ever ask it? Did I? Later in the class, I strike a tree pose with all the intensity of someone reaching the peak of a very high mountain, sweat dripping down my face, determinedly pressing the sole of my foot into the side of my thigh until my ankle shakes. Is this what my body likes? The instructor reminds us to keep our hips level and I realize my pelvis is impossibly slanted. With a clunk that I almost believe is audible in the quiet room, I drop my leg bone into its socket, extending its line and releasing a twisted muscle. Okay. This is something that my body likes.
Inhale.
I learn to read the signals of the room, noting how the instructors will brighten the lights after we’ve warmed up, and it’s a warning that the tough sequences are about to get going. More importantly, the lights slowly dim during our last flow and cooling stretches, and I know that class is approaching its end. There are no clocks, no mirrors, and no windows in this room, and most of the time, I love it. But some days the lights are out and we are in our “final resting pose” and time and space as I know it have become completely suspended and I find that there I am. Alone on a mat in incense-scented darkness, not sure what to do. My thoughts are never quiet and some days they race from topic to topic, each moment presenting an anxiety I was blissfully unaware of for the previous fifty minutes of class. I believe I am supposed to be meditating, or clearing my mind, or finding silence, or whatever else the truly zen yoga girls somehow manage, but instead I am obsessed with the fact that no matter how much I wiggle, I’m still convinced that my body isn’t in a straight line. My hips tilt and my legs are possibly two different lengths and definitely my neck is longer on one side. Maybe my mat is on a diagonal. Maybe my entire life is.
Exhale.
The day I finally do a headstand is a big day. I tell everyone. I text everyone. I want to shout it to strangers on the street. I float on the knowledge of my headstand for days, looking around with a brightness in my eyes and a beautiful, if temporary, belief that I am probably invincible. Sometimes I forget to tell people that this headstand was against the wall, and included the use of my elbows, but I feel that their level of awe when they believe I was suspended without any support is appropriate to the level of awe I feel towards myself in light of this achievement. I have learned how to float, how to fly, how to make myself long. I anchor my hands around a cork block, root my elbows on the ground, walk myself forward until I’m folded in half. And with a kick that feels like it’s going twenty feet into the air, one leg is up. The other follows. Here I am. I’m staring out into a room that has become familiar, but now looks strange. I am impossibly tall, all of a sudden. My body has become a set of building blocks, stacked one on top of the other, stretching toward the ceiling. Here I am, built of something solid.
Inhale.
I never used to listen to my body say no. I made it give me a good reason why I couldn’t do something. I made it provide an annotated bibliography, or peer-reviewed research, or a note from its primary care physician, with reasons why it could not do something that I thought it ought to be able to do. And often, the evidence provided was all the proof I needed that I was lazy. I was weak. I was too big or too clumsy or I ate the wrong things or wore something stupid or never put in any effort or screwed everything up and on and on and on. Because I couldn’t run a mile fast enough, or do enough pirouettes in a row, or climb a rock wall, I was bad and my body was bad and I had failed. So I’m trying to listen now. It’s time. And what I am hearing is that there is no way to fail in yoga. The instructors keep telling me this, and day by day, I believe them. They tell me that I all I have to do is listen to my body. All I have to do is breathe. All I have to do is fall out of my baby crow pose and knock over my metal water bottle and disturb everyone. I try to tell myself these things so they don’t have to. I let myself rest. I sit in child’s pose. I put my knees down to do my push-ups. To my surprise, I still get stronger.
Exhale.
Some nights, we walk into the studio together: Erin, Alyssa, Kiah and me. The girl at the check-in desk smiles and says, “you’re all set” because she already knows our names. While we’re peeling off our outer clothes in the hallway, the instructor sees us and grins. “The whole gang is here!” she observes. That’s me. I’m part of the whole gang now. We roll out our mats near each other, when we can, usually in the back because one of us doesn’t like to be in the front. We gossip until class starts. We share our water bottles when somebody forgets, and we discuss the finer points of the poses we hate on the fifteen-minute walk home. One day, we’re stretching in a twist at the end of class and I extend my arms into a T shape. Because of where Kiah is on her mat, and where I am next to her on mine, I can just reach to brush the underside of her forearm with my finger. She pats my wrist in return and even though I feel like it was probably a weird thing for me to do to begin with, I like letting her know I’m here. The weeks turn into months, and now the semester is ending and we’ll part ways for the summer. But I’m not too worried we’ll lose touch. We’re the whole gang now, the four of us. I mean, we have a group text.
Inhale.
“I let myself rest...
To my surprise, I still get stronger.”
“I can’t believe this is happening to me,” I tell an old friend over a catch-up lunch. “But I’m like, a yoga girl now.” She registers her astonishment with a laugh. I always hated it when people told me I should do yoga, or meditate, or practice mindfulness or basically anything that is meant to make me zen, or peaceful, or one with the universe or whatever. I have anxiety and phobias. I am not a zen person. I do not want to be one with the universe, as there are many things in the universe from which I’m quite comfortable keeping my distance. But here I am, almost four months into this new practice and I’m becoming a yoga girl. I have the muscle tone and the small collection of tank tops and stretchy pants to prove it. I’m still not zen. I don’t practice every day. I’m still working on keeping my back straight in downward dog, on engaging my stomach in upward dog, on straightening my hips in warrior one. But what’s turned me into a yoga girl is that I’m getting stronger. I’m standing taller. I press my hands together at my heart center and bow my head in gratitude for my body, my breath and the fact that I can show up. Typing it out makes me feel a bit ridiculous, a bit hokey, like maybe no one will believe it’s genuine. But that’s okay. Only I need to know what it feels like to be a warrior in the fight to win back my own strength. Only I need to know what it took to get this far. And only I can fight like hell to keep on going.
Exhale.
Thank you.
See you next week.
