And, Behind Gate No. One . . .

Ruminant With A View

by Elizabeth Boleman-Herring

“We enter the gates of awakening carried by the same melodies, the same songs of joy and despair that first called us to the spirit. The ocean of life brings us waves of birth and death, joy and sorrow. For many, as at the beginning of our search, it is the painful truths of life that become our sacred gateway, that open us to the great heart of compassion. The blow of tragedy, the devastation of our losses may have begun our return to the spirit. Now in a deeper octave, this dimension of awakening opens our being to the shared pain of the world. To enter through this gate is called ‘Awakening by the Gate of Sorrow.’”—from After the Ecstasy, the Laundry, by Jack Kornfield

TEANECK, NJ—(Weekly Hubris)—5 April 2010—For months, since October, when my lumbar-sacral spine quite suddenly became “an other,” not a part of the body I call “mine” but, rather, a renegade being within me, an alien (almost), a seeming antagonist, I have been limping through my Level III Iyengar Yoga classes.

Last week, my teacher, Theresa, told me I would have to stop practicing anything but a specific sequence of asanas (Yoga poses) designed to heal the spine.

Today, in Madison, NJ*, I confessed to her that I had attended one Level III class this week, and she said, simply: “Did I not make myself clear?”

“Yes, I said.” Fat tears filled my eyes.

“Just wanted to be sure I’d been clear,” she said, gently.

Oh yes, she and my back had been quite, quite clear. (But, Oh, that Level III class had brought a benison of joy . . . followed by an adagio of pain.)

I know many, many people experience this selfsame “dis-integration,” this being-shut-out from what brings them their greatest joy.

The woman with MS, whose feet and hands and internal thermostat are no longer within her “ken.” The Stage Four cancer patient, a former runner, winded after walking just half a block; sitting on the curb while her daughter runs to bring the family car. The 40-year-old ballerina, whose lifetime of foot and hip pain finally converge in a perfect storm, blocking her from the barre, the studio, not to speak of the stage.

The musician whose glaucoma and cataracts prevent him, also at 50, from sight-reading charts in low light or bright. His fellow musician who, at 35, finds his hands, damaged in a car accident, unable to manipulate the valves of a trumpet. The graceful martial artist who, at 55, has one hip disintegrate and must walk with a cane. The Aikido master who, at 60 or perhaps 70—he’s always appeared ageless—is rendered skin and bone, transparent, by cancer; yet still sees himself, speaks of himself, as a Samurai.

Even the irascible 92-year-old, confined to a nursing home (for the duration), rendered oddly “sweet,” no longer “himself,” by Alzheimer’s.

Our bodies, to our great surprise, run through the “fingers of rock-solid spirit” like sand. They fall to bits (now here, now there) and we find ourselves trapped within them; no longer truly able to “control” or express ourselves through them. In a real sense, they are ours, “we are they,” no more.

For athletes, dancers, musicians, yogis, fine artists—for “People of The Body”—the changes wrought by illness, age and the great variegated symphony of pain, are especially vivid.

At 50, after a hiatus, I returned to Yoga (and the most challenging genre of Yoga, Iyengar, at that) with, yes, a vengeance. I returned late in the day, late in my day, and I wondered whether I’d indeed left it too late—until the asanas began, once again, flowing through me. What unmitigated joy!

For five years, I trained; and then, I began training to teach, and teaching.

Like someone who just escapes a crash, just exits a building before it burns, just catches the last train, I looked up into the heavens and grinned crazily. My days as a card-carrying Yogini were not over.

Six years ago, I even fell down an entire flight of stairs, on my back . . . and walked away from the event, pain-free. But, perhaps, in that fall, or in pushing into backbends, throwing myself up into headstands, somersaulting into Viparita Karani, something in this old, fit, sturdy body was pushed beyond its limits.

The spinal crumbling of October spread to my bladder, driving its nerves witless; numbed my left arm; slid down the back of my left thigh; curled like smoke over my iliac crests.

My GP hid my MRI behind his back. “I’m not going to let you see this: you’ll freak out.”

I freaked out, anyway. Myriad hideously expensive medical tests later (I’ve been exposed to so much radiation, I must glow, deeply, like Chernobyl), I am finally seeing a spinal surgeon next Monday. Just to talk.

The occasional fat tear falls only in Madison, during “Back Class.”

Today, three people worked on me in StudioYoga’s Back Class, a two-hour session offered twice weekly in Madison, NJ, for what I’d term “civilians”—in other words, not Iyengar teachers; not Reiki Masters, and I am both. One person on my team was Theresa, my teacher, and the Director of StudioYoga, who supervises all the Yoga back therapists; one was Hector, a fellow teacher-trainee; the third was a CranioSacral healer, Yolanda Marie Vasquez, who just happened to be visiting from Oakland CA.

The asanas for spinal pain, subluxation, and other damage (I have so much) are tailored for each sufferer, and my sequence was pretty much the same one I have been doing since I began these therapeutic classes with Theresa.

At the end, however, Yolanda stepped in and did some very subtle CranioSacral work with me, and a particular level of despair and pain peeled away. Just peeled away.

The skeptic in me—and I admit to being a left-brain, hard-nosed, recovering-Presbyterian skeptic—has been converted to Yogic and Reiki and CranioSacral healing over many decades. I have seen too much of it occur, and not “simply” on the level of spirit, to any longer be able to poo-poo it (to use one of my South Carolinian mother’s idioms).

Under Yolanda’s hands, and Theresa’s, today, something energetic flew up and out of my spirit; and my spine, too, released some of its tightly-gripped pain.

I am sitting in this crappy old office chair of mine, typing this column tonight, because of what Theresa and Hector and Yolanda (and the Spirit Behind Gate No. One) did for me today.

And, yes, I may have surgery in my future, for a vertebra cracked pitching down a flight of Teaneck stairs. I may have shots of Kenalog to my spine ahead of me, for the curls of pain over the iliac crests.

But I also believe I have lots of Yoga ahead of me, too, though I haven’t the faintest idea what form or shape or name it will take . . . or even whether I will be practicing it in this particular body, or another. I have faith once more that my practice, and my learning, and my teaching of Yoga will continue, unabated, far beyond Gate No. One.

PS My favorite scene in “Monty Python & The Holy Grail” involves the Black Knight, who does battle with King Arthur at a tiny bridge, losing to his opponent, one by one, crucial parts of his body. Finally, reduced to simply a riotously bleeding stump, he yet fights on. “I’m invincible,” he shouts at Arthur’s retreating back. “Come back here and take what’s coming to you!” he adds. “I’ll bite your legs off!”  Well, in a somewhat less martial manner, perhaps, may I embody that attitude in my progress in Yoga; in life. Let’s see now: what’s behind Gate No. Two?

*The author is enrolled in long-term teacher-training studies at StudioYoga, Director Theresa Rowland, Madison NJ  (www.studioyoganj.com).

Yolanda Marie Vasquez teaches Iyengar Yoga, and offers Private Yoga, CranioSacral and Heart Centered Therapies in Oakland CA (www.quietmind.com).