Recently–in a moment of Who the hell knows what’s happening!–I became a practitioner of Spontaneous Yoga. Yoga that required no training, no class, no online video, just walked inside and within 2 feet of the door dropped to my knees in a pose that looked something like this.
http://yogawithmaheshwari.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/child-pose.jpg
It is a called balasana pose—according to the always accurate internet—but I won’t insult yoga aficionados by presuming to understand what or how to do it correctly.
Here was my method:
1) drop my bags
2) plunge to my knees
3) smush my face on the carpet
4) fling my hands in front of me
I am fairly certain I didn’t look like the picture. Put her in jeans, chop the hair and throw a sweatshirt on her and tennis shoes and the picture is clearer. She—on the other hand—looks like she meant to do that. My sudden yoga nature appeared unexpectedly and without permission.
It looked a lot like prayer, but a less romantic vision. Had someone been in the room, their comment wouldn’t have been, “Look at that quiet moment with God,” but more likely, “Did she just slip on something? Should we call a doctor?”
Mostly I was impressed with the ability of my life to drop me to my knees. I had forgotten the way an experience, a conversation, a moment, could liquefy the bones in your legs and—like a bag of potatoes—drop you, rendering you helpless on the floor.
Suddenly the floor felt welcoming, like an old friend who says “Where ya been?” The kind of friend you don’t see very often, but when you do, one of you inevitably says, “Why don’t we do this more often?!”
When I fell to the floor—the carpet brushing my cheeks with threads of comfort—I heard it say, “It’s safer down here anyway. Stay as long as you like.”
The truth was—in that moment—life had floored me, just like my legs had. Falling to the floor was a physical manifestation of having the energy sucked out of me. It caught me off guard. But walking in the door, away from the car, from all the noise outside, from all the everything, well, I was no match.
Standing is overrated anyway.
When I’m ready, I’ll say a prayer….then look for lint.
Breathing Tales 