yugen
“People are least aware of others when demonstrating their own power over them.”
My experience with Kai.
I’ve given him a new name to respect the privacy of the individual. I want to create a container around the event that preserves the integrity of our humanity.
We all get angry. We all fail. We all fall.
The point is to get up; rise to the opportunity- the lesson spinning from a prism. I catch the rainbows in my hands. Webbing that lashes and fades. You cannot catch it; it appears and disappears through the clouds.
A prism is not permanent. The lesson is.
Most are too focused on the spirals of light. The pretty waves of colours make a mosaic across the skin. Do peacocks get distracted by their own tail? Are distraction and destruction similar?
What about excavation and creation?
The world is divided into two groups: those that dig the holes and those that fill the holes.
I’m a filler. I flow. I adapt and mingle and muse somewhere in between what is presented and what is desired. The diggers are mad. Wild with desire. Wanting. Rage. The innovators. The visionaries. The scientists.
Artists are the fillers. Breaking the gaps. Seeing the holes for what they really are.
Heartache.
The day started the same- I went to the yoga class with my Bala bars strapped to my ankles. Two pounds for each heel to strengthen my hamstrings. A tear from a hole-digging teacher who didn’t understand the mechanics of my body and pushed too hard. He hit clay.
I set my mat at the far edge of the room by the wall. A little to the back. I prefer being in the corner where I can see and cannot be easily seen. Privacy amidst the communal setting.
Kai took his place up front and began his sermon. The theme this month is Nada, vibration, or tone. Nada Yoga is the union through sound. Listen. Receive the pulse with your mouth. Open wide and swallow. Lips like crystal, I purr at the windowsill and watch the tree rustle. It crackles in the wind. I hear it.
My body thrums against the wooden floorboards, and Kai asks us to inquire deeply into why we do what we do. Why do you say what you say? Why do you move as you move? Develop your mind. Do not follow blindly; ask why before you do something.
Wise words from a young shaven sage.
I wave and ripple. Rise and fall. Stretch and sweat. I am a honeysuckle stalk with peaches and cream blossoms. I grow up between the dirt and rubble and call the bees to my flowers. Honeysuckle cannot grow in the wind. There is no breeze in the room, so I flourish.
Midway through class, at the 50-minute mark, we are prompted to take a passive pigeon pose. The instruction is given while we are in an active pigeon pose as Kai takes his stance at the front of the room to give the direction of where we are going next.
To make it easy for you to identify the difference between an active and passive pigeon pose, an active pigeon is taken with the back upright. In contrast, a passive pigeon is taken with the torso folded towards the ground.
In an active position, the core and leg muscles support the upright shape of the torso. In a passive position, the weight of the torso folded toward the ground increases the passive stretch of the pelvis, hips, and groin.
The cue was to take a passive pigeon pose. I folded and placed my forearms on the ground. Kai tends to take a lengthy sermon mid-class to deconstruct a pose or exercise, so I closed my eyes to listen and leaned into the hip opener.
As I pressed my forehead to the earth and closed my eyes, I became aware of Kai’s tone sharpening. He raised his voice, and the intone shifted from light and playful to low and demanding.
“You’re not listening, Dear. Do you hear me? We are upright, not folded; that is not part of what we are doing. You must listen to ME and stay with the group.”
Slowly, curiously, I started to lift myself from the ground-
“You’re not listening. You don’t know where we are going, Dear. You need to stay upright and listen to ME.”
The recognition settles around my body like scalding water from the shower. I hadn’t realized how hot it was. I didn’t know the intensity of the demand. My being fills with fury as I realize the words are for me: dear, listen, do you hear me?
Obey.
Obedience.
Obfuscate.
Obliterate.
Obviously-
Durga enters my body, and I am ready to rage. I press myself up and meet his eyes, ready to strike with Kali’s tongue that laps up the blood of those she beheaded.
What I perceive stops me. Mid-mount, I am stalled and choke on Kali’s tongue.
I see Code, four years old, standing in the street crying because Frankie ran ahead. Red-faced, shaking, fists clenched, body taut as a violin string, screeching. Needing me. Needing attention. Needing to be held. Needing to be seen. Validated.
Kai’s body has taken a similar shape. He is four years old with his heart in his mouth. He no longer looms over me with ‘Dear’ and ‘Listen.’
I see you, I say with my eyes. Durga evaporates like the water I feed the plants on Neus’s balcony. Quietly and quickly, the plants are parched and need to be fed.
Like Kai’s heart.
I sit up and press my fingertips to the floor, mimicking the stance of the women around me. Kai is the only male in the room.
The moments passed. He’s moved on to the rest of the demonstration. My misdemeanor is no longer holding the focus. The shame pulses against the floorboards. My heart pounds and pounds and pounds from fingertips to perineum. I send a message with its rhythm, ‘I see you, it’s alright. I got you.’
It’s the same thing I said to Code again and again.
When Frankie beat him in a race across the playground. Each time the wheel of his scooter got stuck in a craggy lip of the sidewalk, sending him flying and spattering like an egg against the asphalt. Each time he begged for a second chocolate croissant, the answer was always a firm no.
I see you; I got you; I am here for you. You’ve got this.
Kai hears me. Receives the message. He comes over when we take pigeon pose on the other leg and gives me an assist. Tells a joke. We both laugh.
A non-verbal apology and the last moment we’ll share.
I will not return to his class.
The hive mind follows.
He filled us up with his speech.
Sermon.
Semen.
Secretion.
I understand how to listen.
Lighten.
Enliven.
Enlighten.
Seeds. Beads of wisdom. A pearl. It comes from the inside, not outwards, though the outside can give little pokes to wake up the inside.
Heart like a honeysuckle stalk.
I rise up and up and up and up.
Photo source.
