Today is on mute, just like yesterday. I’m shaped like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, sitting cross-legged on a pillow on my bed. My shoulder and traps feel complicated and tight. I keep the whole mess still and isolate the movement in my spine at T12, just below the mass of darkness that surrounds my heart and shrouds me. I lift my rib cage. One small adjustment. Underneath, my diaphragm expands like the large mouth of a muppet, exposed on cue and singing.
Good morning, it bellows. I wiggle my hips and shake my torso.
Shaking encourages wiggling in my shoulders, but the tightness persists. I lift my chin and center my head between my shoulders. I tilt my head from side to side. Squeeze my shoulder blades to my spine. Too much stimulation, every which way. My ligaments and bones feel like knitting wool and needles exhaustively intertwined. I will pull something the wrong way if rush this. I resist a deep stretch for now. I deliberately expand and contract my diaphragm. I need to loosen up in there first.
Kapalbhati. Breathing becomes an event that comes over me like a yawn comes over my cat. I start deliberately and finish when it’s done. I place my hands on my knees, so my arms can dangle as out of the way as possible. My arms are doing nothing, as an extension of my shoulders. My rib cage is lifted, I broaden my collarbone. Out of habit of respect for a mysterious god, I bow my head. But I also do this to stretch the back of my neck. Not too much. Jalandhara Bandha. There is a position of the cervical spine in which my jaw hangs, the musculature of my throat and shoulders hang in such a way that release occurs. I know it’s happening when I feel the weight of my body shift, the passageways my breath takes, from my diaphragm through my nasal cavity, is less constricted. It’s easier to just be here.
It’s easier to expand my diaphragm when I inhale and wring it out completely when I exhale. I begin deliberately. Over-exaggerate the movement of breath. Expand and contract the diaphragm to it’s fullest extent, resisting the urge to move your spine to accommodate. Inhale, pause. Exhale, pause. Intensity and speed accelerate, like a train leaving the station. Release crackles through my hips and sacrum, my shoulder blades and traps, my collar bone and neck. My head is warm and I feel like I am swaying, but I am not. My eyes are closed. I am counting exhales. I lose track, roll my shoulders back and shake all the tension from the cracks of my stiff body like dust flies off the rafters of an old broken house transforming into the tender flesh of a soft giant in a weird movie.
When I emerge from what feels like a tiny dream, my breath returns to normal and I have feeling. Some movement returned to my back and shoulders. Not all of it, just enough to sit a little more comfortably. Less hunchback, more me, whatever I am.
1. Now, the teachings of yoga.
Yoga Sutras of Patanjali 1.1-4
2. Yoga is to still the patterning of consciousness.
3. Then pure awareness can abide in its very nature.
4. Otherwise, awareness takes itself to be the patterns of consciousness.
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