Day Two

I've never had a terribly good relationship with my body. From as far back as I can remember, I was tagged as clumsy and uncoordinated both in my own mind and by others. It didn't improve as I got older. I distinctly remember a junior high phys-ed teacher rounding angrily on me during a floor hockey game after I brutally (though unintentionally) knocked another player off his feet. I also hit the same teacher directly in the face with a basketball as he tried to block my throw-in from the side. I don't recall my grade that year, but probably wasn't an 'A'.

All my life I've struggled with a broad divide between body and mind, my body seeming largely a liability and an external one at that. When I looked in the mirror I saw a face I knew was mine, but I didn't know who it was. I hated (and still hate) photographs of myself seeing the vacant gaze of someone who wasn't quite there.

Yoga is practiced in front of a mirror. You're intended to watch yourself and your attempts to form each posture. As I dipped and wove, wobbled and strained, I saw as well as felt each motion, each stretch and movement of muscle and bone. There isn't much room for extra thought. The postures require too much concentration and focus. You move and hold, and watch and breathe.

I've been slowly getting to know my body. In the past two years I've lost about 100 lbs and had days of grace and clarity I would never have imagined. At the same time, I've struggled to understand the various imbalances and sensitivities that contribute to my difficulties both mentally and physically. Slowly, the gap between body and mind is shrinking and I am beginning to experience life as a physical - a human - being. This body is beginning to feel like my own.

There's something about physical pain that's incredibly grounding, and I'm finding that being stiff and sore from a good day's work seems to make the flesh fit better. It feels like mine, like I've earned it somehow. The practice of the yoga itself- the steady pace of movement, posture and rest, the slow intake of breath, the quiet voice of guidance - forms a lattice on which the moment hangs, creating freedom to simply feel and be. And the performing of this practice in a group, a mass of human bodies moving together, breathing through sweat and strain, representing a wide cross-section of gender, age, personality and race, creates a strange intimacy of shared experience. It's a reminder of the physicality of being human, something I was raised to deny.