The Power of Posture

This morning was an awful morning. One of the worst. The kind of morning I wish I could erase for all of us. Eden screamed a new high-pitched hysteric scream and wrestled out of her clothes. Silas's need unraveled into whining and finally scream-sobbing. My patience snapped like a twig and fire roared out. The skies poured and rumbled with thunder. Needs were cross-firing and I pulled over mid-drive and got out to cool off.

Finally, 30 minutes late, in rain boots and raincoats, I got Silas to his classroom, I got Eden to the nursery, and I walked into yoga late and unrolled my wrinkled mat. Instantly I was sweating, focusing on balance, on the floor beneath my feet, on the movements between poses, my muscles shaking. About twenty minutes in, we paused in child's pose, body bowed, forehead to the mat, arms extended. The teacher said, "remember your prayer from the beginning of class, your intention; come to that now." I, of course, had missed the beginning of the class and hadn't assigning any sort of purpose to my practice, but as I lay pressed to the floor, and the word sorry rushed in and hot tears ran into my sweaty hairline.

In a few breaths, our faces were lifted to the ceiling again, arms extended, and my mind focused again on moving. But throughout the class, each time we lay against the ground and bowed our foreheads to the floor, my sadness unlocked again.

I've never before accessed emotion through posture, but I wonder what I wouldn't have felt if I had stayed standing on my own feet.