Moves of the heart are the hotline to all stories

                            I want to unfold.

Let no place in me hold itself closed,

for where I am closed

I am false.

–Rainer Maria Rilke

 

Fluid yoga, going to six years, continues remaking and each remaking is connected to another. Born in water, I am dragonfly, now rabbit. I shift to camel, fish, or embody an ever-watchful sphinx. Then I evolve once again, going back and yet forward at the same time to my child in his innocent, trusting repose. My evolving is your evolving: inward, backward, downward.

Your asana is my asana, my bending and shaping is your bending and shaping, your practice of eustress and release morphs into luminous savasana. Your savasana is my savasana, and mine is yours: a cloud, salty and damp.

 

YOUR LONGINGS ARE MY LONGINGS

 

This cloud, a safe home for witnesses and their truths, where every joy and sorrow bursts forth in prophetic rain. And as colors bend to make a rainbow, these witnesses bend into their longings. Your longings are my longings.

We breathe into sweet release, and the turning becomes a roadmap for traveling outward. The trail makes little sense; it leads down to the place where gravity rests. Tracking energy for centuries, the Tao notes that water flows to low places. My gravity is your gravity.

My guru said the way out is the way in. Her wisdom comes from a bloodline far to the east, from a practice that bent and molded her matter-mind, from evidence etched into the soles of her feet. Tucked in like a child, she steps over the soles of my feet, and your East meets my West.

Flowing like water to low places, propelled by gravity, I heat and shape. I’m an ongoing story of learning; my teachers are ancient reformers here and now, and our alchemical brew is at once ancient and new.

My reformation is your reformation. Yoga twists re-formations into new perspectives where we find our unique physiography. Lumbar, thorax, and cervical spine rotate, flex, and extend. The witnesses breathe, rest, and rise. Your twisting spine is mine, and my resting is your resting.

I pause in this fluid journey and track my gaze from ground to horizon to sky. A new ascent and descent has me poised to receive. Your receiving is my receiving, and we are but shells holding other Selves.

Moves of the heart are the hotline to all stories, and I promise myself to rewrite the openings. I remain patient for every commencement and know this beginning only echoes deeper layers of the child’s first rising. Back to that first breath, back to the child, back to water gathering in low places, back to the heart; I pause, and know I am back to the beginning.