Do you know that feeling of lying down in supine twist pose (Supta Matsyendrasana) where you lie down on your back with your arms outstretched parallel to your shoulders, and you lift one leg, bend your knee and then drop it over to the opposite side while keeping the other leg straight? That feeling, that your body is somewhat not aligned, not really symmetrical, not really identical on both sides.
Oh yeah, a simple twist that sounds extremely complicated. This is one of my favorite stretches in yoga, and every time I do it I cannot help but notice the differences in the left and right side of my body.
Differences/observations , some subtle and some not so subtle — I am going to call these “the crinkles of yoga”.
Those small nuances, observations you make when you are lying on your mat, your lower back finding support from mother earth, as you focus on the asana you are trying to do at that very moment when everything else slowly fades away. Suddenly you start noticing things that you have never noticed before. Things about your body you never realized before. How powerful these realizations can be, and how grounding! You can only experience this feeling, it is hard to put them in words.
How long have you taken your body for granted, using it in ways you find right, abusing it when you should have chosen better, and treating it as some kind of a vehicle that does your bidding. Without having the faintest idea of the possibilities that exist when you understand the miraculous things it is capable of if you had known how to connect with it earlier.
If you had understood how your mind and gut were connected perhaps, you could have battled anxiety better. If you had known how deeply pleasurable lying on your back, grounding yourself to the earth is, you would have seen the damage fancy mattresses have been doing to your spine.
The more time you spend on your mat, the more you become aware of the distance you have created between you and your body.
Let me take you back to Supine pose, and that feeling of having your shoulder grounded to the earth as you look at your fingers, head to the ground. I notice my left shoulder wobbling and refusing to touch the ground as my left leg twists to the right side of my body. I do not just notice this, I cherish this feeling. I actually enjoy it. It fills me with immense gratitude that I have taken this time to choose to spend with my body, and connect to it. Half an hour that I would have otherwise spend mindlessly scrolling, consuming something that dulls my brain, or worse thinking about things I cannot control.
Instead, I am here with my wobbling left shoulder, and a smile on my face as I slowly let go of the little misgivings I have developed towards my body. At this very moment, your left shoulder is wobbling because it is trying its very best, I tell myself. Your body is trying to show up for you, just as you have shown up for your body today on this mat.
And that’s all that matters. That is all I try to do these days. To Show up, to show up for my body, for my mind, for the people around me, and for everything that is connected to something.
Are you showing up too? In what ways? Let’s talk.
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