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Quandary, clarity
Saturday morning another intense vinyasa workout (see January 14, 2010, Morning/yoga/dance) overjoyed me. Michelle guided us in constant movement from a high lunge at the top of our mats to one at the back, over and over. Then, as on Wednesday, we sank into Goddess Squat, this time with our arms striking straight up and then forward, parallel to the ground. In each of the many repetitions we opened our fists in the outward gesture and closed them as we pulled our hands, fingers up, into the torso. Vocalization increased the exertion and the pleasure: Ha! with every inward action of the arms.
The last week of 2009 into the second week of 2010 found me in an uncharacteristically indecisive place about an aspect of my life. Quandary then clarity then quandary then clarity . . . By the Wednesday evening after the first super-activating vinyasa class clarity was mine!
During the previous couple of days I’d talked about the peaking quandary/clarity with two close girlfriends, both of whom I updated regularly about the situation that was generating the back and forth. The Tuesday night before the vinyasa class I talked with a friend who lives in Brooklyn about the same situation. Although she and I visit with one another on the phone and in person irregularly, our conversations and perspectives on beauty, the body, women, men, gender, sex, and fashion stem from deliciously compatible temperaments, readings, and intentions for our lives. That night Dianne’s wisdom, grace, and gentleness helped me. She could be my daughter–her age. She is my sister, simpatico to the max. As luck would have it, she had experienced and clarified a situation similar to my own, and her words and demeanor were invaluable.
Often people attribute a solution, answer, or end to a problem to one thing: they stop eating chocolate and they lose weight; they stay silent when their sibling taunts them and the relationship improves; they go to sleep in a cool room and their insomnia is cured. I think that a complex of actions, events, thoughts, and feelings influences the outcome of any difficulty and that we generally know or piece together only a smidgen of ingredients of whatever healing brew has “suddenly” done its job.
Thank you, the ingredients I know of in this most recent brew: Dianne, Frances, Michelle, Becky, Kat, Larry, Hazrat Inayat Khan; springlike Tucson weather; the I Ching and the Richard Wilhelm and Thomas Cleary editions of it; patience, silence, faith, physical exertion; and we at the (seeming) center of a dilemma whose time has passed.
I went for a bang trim right after Saturday’s yoga class. Still in its pitch and rhythms, I described the Goddess Squat sound and actions to my hairstylist, who said “I love it!” because they meant to her, “It’s for me! It’s for me!” Strength and courage in and for oneself–grabbing them out of thin air and pulling them into the gut and the heart.
- January 18, 2010
- Filed under: Body and mind, Pleasure
- Comments 2
Hi Aphrodite! Happy Birthday! how wonderful to have clarity on your birthday, certainly a blessed day for you and us.
Seems like the regularly scheduled “bang trims” are also therapeutic for you. I am sure if I had bangs, they would wind up looking like a sheep dog’s until the sweat of goddess squat combined with bangs in my eyes drove me headlong into a bang trim trip. chuckles and metta.
Dear Friend, I just so happened to have gotten bangs at the salon today.
Then tonight while eating a nourishing dinner (followed by wicked dessert) I decide to check in to your blog, and I read this. Yes! Ha! Bang trims, I can hardly wait.
Here’s to this moment. And the next one,
and the next.
Happy Birthday Joanna.