Gaze

Last Friday at 5 am the air was finally cool.  Wednesday had (yet again!) reached over 100 degrees.  Storms broke Thursday & by Friday I began to remember what it felt like to be refreshed.  I joined my students for a sweaty, steamy yoga practice at 6 am.  I love practicing when the rain drums outside.  It seems to pull everything in a little bit tighter.

I've mentioned previously on this blog that I do my best to attend to theme.  I teach in a studio that also considers the Jivamukti Yoga School's theme of the month.  July is Yoga & Sexuality.  When I first heard I was so hesitant to speak overtly about sexuality in a yoga class.  I know some students come to yoga to work through sexual trauma.  I know some students are partnered and some aren't.  Sexuality means so many things to people.

However, as the month has unfolded it has felt increasingly important to address sexuality in the context of yoga, just as we use this practice to delve a bit deeper into every other area of our lives.  To do my homework, I've been reading "A General Theory of Love."  This book was written by several psychotherapists who consider both the body of art & literature on love as well as psychiatric & scientific studies on the subject.  I've learned a ton thus far from this read.  So much of it smacks of Yogic thinking.  In reading about "limbic resonance" the authors considered gaze.  Limbic resonance refers to the limbic brain, which only mammals have.  It's the part of the brain that enables us to relate & emote.  The resonance develops in relation to one another.  The authors mentioned how different one of us might experience a staring contest with a lizard vs. gazing at our newborn's eyes for the first time or stealing a furtive glance on a first date.  There's a spark or connection in that meeting of eyes that creates a bond, or resonance.

In any yoga practice there should be attention to gaze, or drishti.  Usually, that gaze will help hold the attention internally, like Friday's rain emphasized in my own practice.  I can't think of a moment when we would gaze in another's eyes for the purpose of yoga.  But isn't it lovely & interesting that we are so encouraged to attend to our gaze.  I usually consider drishti linked to pratyahara, the withdrawal of the senses & deepening concentration.  It certainly is.  But isn't it interesting to consider attending to our gaze as cultivating a deeper relationship with ourselves.  Perhaps even allowing for a more profound internal resonance.  This idea isn't mutually exclusive from pratyahara, or any other aspect of practice reinforced by drishti.

As my students & I began steadying in the studio to the drumming rain outside, we considered gaze.  We pulled it hazily back to the tip of the nose, the navel, the corners of our eyes, or towards the third eye, depending on each asana's prescription.  The primacy of gaze caused me to remember other moments of seeing & being seen.

My sister is 11 years older than I am.  She was at college in Bryn Mawr, near where I grew up, when I was about 10.  My mother was in grad school so while she had a night class once a week I joined my sister in her figure drawing class.  I was shy & inhibited so she put me in the corner with homework, playing cards, & my own art supplies.  From time to time I would glance at her or the model.  My own body seemed so strange and foreign.  To see a woman comfortably sharing her own body in this space of respect & learning felt freeing.  None of the side conversations reflected judgment or assessment.  All were about beauty, line, form.

A few years later I modelled for friends of mine who were art students.  I never modelled for a stranger, only people I knew.  Through the process of sitting for them, & later in witnessing their creation, my own gaze of myself shifted.  I saw myself through their eyes or the eyes of others who would consider their sculpture.  I found myself pulling away from self-critique & towards a gradually deepening appreciation to hold form & take shape.

Embodying Story

At summer camp, as a young girl, I took modern dance.  I remember dancing freely with the teacher's voice suggesting I "be a tree."  Reflecting back, it sounds so much less inhibited than I usually recognize myself to be.  It sounds so much more hippie than I generally acknowledge myself to be.  But I came home begging my mother to send me to modern dance lessons.

We lived in the Philly suburbs.  To my knowledge, in the early 90s she probably would have had to commit to drive me to Philly for lessons.  I'm sure it could have been a burden to a working mother.  She found a ballet studio run by two Polish former dancers.  One played the piano & the other kept time by banging her cane.  These ballerinas had danced for survival.  I wanted to dance for something else.

I remember that same spark of recognition when I wandered into Barry's house as a teenager.  His mother took sculpting classes at night.  Their home was filled with nude sculptures of real women with generous thighs, soft shoulders, & round bellies.  As a young woman, growing into my own skin, it suddenly seemed possible that I could find a home there.  I looked closely at what Barry's mother had fashioned: I could see her thumb nail carve out a shoulder blade, her print on a calf, where she had sprayed water to soften, & where she'd allowed clay to harden & form.

I loved working with clay.  I loved the tactile sensation.  I loved sculpting & feeling that lineage to something epic, some sensation of man from earth, imagination to reality.  I took a workshop with Jill Manning where she compared backbending towards throwing a pot on a wheel, slowly centering.

During this time my main expression was writing.  I wrote tons of poetry & short stories.  The poetry was mainly influenced by Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, & Adrienne Rich.  A different voice appealed to me in stories.  I liked something rugged & rich in Flannery O'Connor's tales & generally dug deep in the Southern American cannon for authors.  

All of these authors directed me to their sources.  Sylvia Plath especially sent me towards Biblical stories, Greek, & Roman myths.  I loved the drama.  I loved the crafting of Self.

All of these memories have resurfaced for me recently.  I'm teaching kids yoga, which I don't do often.  I began remembering what felt compelling to me around age nine.  It was movement & story.  That is yoga-- connecting to something deep, rich, & possibly buried within ourselves.  Freeing up & moving through.  Sculpting our own forming bodies into something authentic.  

In recent years I've read many of the stories that shaped yoga practice.  My plan is to allow these young students to embody Virabhadra & then learn about the epic tale between he, Sita, & Daksha.  Teach the students how to inhabit Natarajasana & then explore the significance of Nataraj dancing & stamping out ignorance.  Balance in Ardha Candrasana & giggle at the origin tale of Ganesh hurling his husk at the moon.

Sweetly, though I have yet to meet this group of students they've already offered me this exploration in preparing their class.  There is such a richness in the relationship of learning.  I have the blessing & privilege of watching students stride a little more knowledgeably within themselves & in so doing, excavate.