Day Eight: Get that Junk out of the Trunk

If yoga is about humility and abandonment of ego, then I got a dose of both this morning! I was feeling light, lithe, and long until one of the final seated poses--forward bend. It comes right after backbend and is meant to counteract the intense stretch to the spine. To prepare for forward bend, one sits with his or her legs together straight out in front. The next instruction is to pull the flesh away from the sit bones, so that the spine and pelvis are grounded to the floor.

These are the directions I usually follow, but today, as I came down from backbend, my stomach lurched--I'm not sure if it was the heat or the lentil stew from the night before. Anyhow, I needed to sit still for a few breaths and let everything settle back into place. Rached had something else in mind: it was my turn to be adjusted. Hastily, I flung my legs out in front of me, and before I had the chance to adjust my own sit bones, he squatted down behind me, grasped my hamstrings, lifted me a few inches off the floor, and redistributed the flesh (and I do have some!) on my backside up, out, and behind me.

The adjustment--or the big scoop as I recall it--took only a second or two, but it left me feeling less than lithe and light. In that brief moment, I lost all focus on what my body was able to do (and not do), and could think only about how it looked.

I did what many of my sex do--I fretted over the size of my ass. Then, fortunately, I realized that my ass at that moment was nothing in size compared to my ego!