Yoga in the Dark

I haven’t been to a yoga class in a while, so when I learned about a two-hour session taking place on Saturday in the dark, I said: Sure, I’ll go. Alyssa, a former co-worker of mine who is beautiful and strong and enthusiastic about encouraging people to just shut up and love themselves, was giving it. After some hemming and hawing, I told her I’d pop in.

There were a few of us who made the journey, one who was recovering from a cold, another working crazy hours at three different jobs, and another drowning in wedding plans.

Alyssa closed the shades and asked us to face away from the windows. She talked about the tendency of our egos to get in the way of things, in yoga and in life. How we move forward based on what’s happening around us, and how we want to look in the eyes of our friends and family. But in the darkness, with only our bodies and the small candles scattered across the room, we had the chance to let go of all of that stuff, and to just focus on how we felt in that quiet, empty room.

From all of the movements we did, I think the one I’ll remember most was pigeon pose. It's a hip opener. It requires you to face the floor, bring one knee forward toward your wrist, face your shin diagonally so your heel faces your frontal hip bone, and reach your hands out to the floor and down. Or something like that. (This is where the internet comes in handy.) My hips, which are turned in due the way my bones are aligned, don’t do this very easily. They never have. But this time they did their best. We stayed there for what felt like ten minutes. As the time passed on I could feel the stretching sensation expanding to new muscles and crevices in my hips and legs. Bit my bit my body accepted the position and then embraced it.

The experience reminded me of the time I sat in a sweat lodge with a community near Mt. Hood in Oregon for an hour or so, feeling hot steam in every pore of my skin; and of the morning I meditated with a group of Chaco-wearing fifty year olds in an home down the street from where I lived, sitting cross-legged long enough to make my spine sore. These are the forms of prayer that stick with me the most, each a reminder of the capacity I have to hold on, no matter how uncomfortable the position, and let it surprise me.

Maybe that’s what I’m trying to do with this little blog, which at the moment I’m too self-conscious to share with anyone. I’m following an urge to take my thoughts from a journal full of illegible handwriting to another place, and too keep coming back, even when I worry that I may not have anything valuable to say.

Maybe the act of staying is what we are called to do in our lives—to stay in the place we are, with the people around us, and the feelings welling up in our stomachs, and to never, ever, wish it away.

Noah, Chapter Three

Our tour guide sat us down on a stone bench before the main entrance to the Vatican Museum. She was a petite Italian woman with short blonde hair. She told us that once we got going, through the long hallways that led to the Sistine Chapel, she wouldn’t be able to give us what we needed to appreciate its the famous ceiling.

Once we got comfortable, she took a red book out of the tan bag that hung on her shoulder and began flipping through the pages, which described in detail every section of one of Michelangelo’s most famous works. She told us it took the 33-year-old four years to paint it, and that he didn’t want to do it in the first place. Commissioned by Pope Julius II, the room was meant only for the eyes of the most powerful; men who would be most able to understand the meaning the imagery held.

There too much to remember from a twenty-minute explanation, and the time we spent in the room in a quiet admiration of this ceiling. What I sticks with me most is Michelangelo’s choice to broadcast the section of Noah’s story in Chapter 9 of Genesis, that may have been left out of my CCD curriculum:

Noah and his Sons (Genesis 9, 20-27)

Now Noah, farmer of the land, he began to plant a vineyard. And he drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father, and told his two brothers outside. Then Shem and lafet took a garment, laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward and covered their father's nakedness; their faces were turned back, they saw not their father's nakedness. When Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done; then said, / "Cursed be Canaan! / Slave Slave / will be to his brothers" ./ And he said, / "Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; / Canaan be his slave / God expands lafet / and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem / Canaan be his slave. "

Noah drinks more wine than he should have while in the vineyard, his sons find him in a compromised state and do what they can to make it right, and the situation leads to an unpleasant family argument.  Not an image portraying the wonder of God's creation of light and darkness, earth and water, plant and animal, man and woman.  By chapter 9—all of these elements have blended together, in a discord and harmony that can’t be explained or controlled. And yet, life goes on. Generations continue, carrying their fears, flaws and sins.

I’m home now; almost over jet lag, but not quite. I’ve finally hand-washed the clothing items stained with gelato and red wine. Trying to eat more vegetables and less tortilla chips, be productive at work, get more sleep, “plan for my future." I’m back to ignoring and listening to the tiny nagging voices in my head. I just keep thinking about Michelangelo, twisting his body in all sorts of directions toward that ceiling, every stroke a plea to accept ourselves and each other for the mess we are.