Thursday, March 17, 2005

jiggling the handle

On Tuesday night I attended yoga alone.  Class started strangely: Nina, the instructor, announced that she was tired; maybe we’d spend the evening in shabasana - “deep relaxation” pose, flat on our backs.  We didn’t, but it clued me in that she needed to recharge her batteries.  Then she asked to be stretched, physically, and two of the class regulars volunteered to help her out - she laid on her her back with her arms up and they grabbed her wrists and ankles, yanked her fore and aft on the human rack as she giggled with glee.  As we then proceeded with a standard class of typically vigorous postures, she occasionally forgot where she was in the sequence - which move to do next, which side we’d “done” and which needed “doing”.... “left” and “right” sometimes muddled themselves in her instructions.  She was really fading on us.

"Let’s pull together,” she recommended, and got us to contract up into 1/2 the space we’d taken up before - all 20 or 25 of us on thin rubber mats about one foot apart from each other.  This actually seemed to create communal energy among us as we breathed, moved, flowed as one multi-cellular organism; this also helped Nina to instruct us more efficiently: she could speak more naturally, could see us more easily all at once, reach those of us who needed a touch of guidance faster.  She seemed to perk up, but occasionally she still seemed to be firing on four of six, if you get my meaning. 

“Okay,” she eventually announced emphatically but quietly, “I’m going to teach you a special exercise now - one I haven’t ever taught in the three years I’ve been giving lessons here.” Her face revealed a strange combination of exhaustion, eagerness, and trepidation.  “Raise your left index finger up higher than your head.” This was already unusual.  I’d never been put in this posture in yoga class before.  All two dozen or so of us stood facing the big front mirror, pointing to the acousti-tiles overhead....

Class that night consisted of several “regulars” and a bunch of newbies, some of whom had revealed that they’d never taken a yoga class before.  We represented a wide variety of skill and fitness levels.  One of the regulars in attendance was John, a tall man in his later years, grey/bald, bearded and avuncular; he takes all the yoga classes offered at the Y and he’s one of the very few people there with whom I have a nodding acquaintence.  Other than John, I was the only male person in the class.  We all stood with our index fingers aloft and I had a premonition of dread: I sensed line dancing in my future.  I was not enthusiastic.  As if to inflame my concern, Nina, laughing, started switching her hips and swinging her pointed finger from ceiling to floor - actually doing the Hustle.  It was worse than I’d feared. 

With a smirk she cast off her little dance and rejoined us in “Statue of Liberty” pose.  She explained, grinning impishly, “In so many postures, I ask you to curl your tailbone to one side or the rother, to tuck it or lift with it or from it… This an exercise in discovering your tailbone and what it can do for you.  Stand up nice and tall. (We did.) Curve your lower back in so your bootie sticks out.  (We did.) Now, take your finger and trace it down your spine - all the way down till the tip of your finger is on the end of your tailbone.”

We hesitated.  Some of us weren’t sure what she wanted us to do; others just didn’t believe she was actually telling us to do it.  She sensed our coy inertia even as she slid her hand down behind her back.  “I’m going to show you,” she said both sweetly and wryly, “where to position your hand to do this.  She turned around.  Her left hand was jammed between her asscheeks, which blossomed out toward us as her lower back curved dramatically forward.  But who was looking at her back?  Her black leotard bulged over her toned globes, her hand disappeared in the warm darkness of their deep crevasse.  Her fingers, intimately hidden, began to work as she spoke to us over her shoulder: “See how far I have to reach?  It’s really in there, you have to stretch for it.  Now you try.”

We all looked at each other sheepishly for a moment in the mirror facing us, and then ran our fingers down our spines, feeling each vertebrum, feeling the sacrum’s wide curve out and its subtle curve back in.... as I worked my way down the path of bones my fingers were now no longer in the open air - they were surrounded by my own sitting flesh, burrowing deeper, gingerly but gamely - and then my outstretched finger found its mark.  I pressed lightly on the end of my long-neglected vestigial tail - and my whole body felt the difference.  It was like I’d been lifted up by my spine, like I’d been physically pulled straight by a good friend.  I heard whispers, groans, sighs and giggles from all around me - we all felt the energy behind this hidden switch.  “It’s a pretty intimate feeling.” “I never knew that was there.” “Oh, wow.” We all stood on our mats with our hands securely lodged between our lotusbolsters, gently manipulating the butt-end of our spine.  Nina taught us how to press it from side to side, to expand its mobility and our awareness of it, and then incorporated these expanded capacites into postures I thought I had already understood pretty well but that were suddenly endowed with theretofore-unimagined depth, stability and expressiveness.  Class continued, then, with renewed energy, increased focus, and generally excellent spirits all around. 

The next morning I tried to describe this experience to Kelly.  We both reached back to our respective rumps to find that nub of bone and re-integrate it into our conscious postures.  As first Kel foundered, searching for hers with both hands.  I could easily tell when she found it, though: she suddenly curved her back and emitted an involuntary, throaty “whoa.” We didn’t spend much time on this little exercise that morning but it didn’t take long.  When you find the switch and turn it on, the light keeps coming out of it till you turn it off - and even after a long day of meetings and heavy phone work, numbercrunching and proofreading, salad-at-desk and sitting all slumped over at the computer, when I got on the bus back home that night that light was still shining from the lowest reaches of my spine.  Today will be a heavy day too, and I may need to jiggle the handle there to get that good energy flowing again.  I’ll just have to make sure I’m not being watched.  I don’t think my colleagues want to hear me explaining that I’m not having any lower-tract issues - I’m just stimulating my coccyx.