All parts touch equally
On my back, on the floor, I am lying alone in a dark living room considering that this may no longer be my home away from home. That, in fact, I am a stranger here, simply visiting a life that has sprouted and been nurtured without me. My home -- the one supporting a life I increasingly appreciate -- is more than 3,000 miles away, and I am a bit lonely for it in these moments passing in the dark.
I hear the clock ticking and the dogs breathing. Occasionally, the enduring calm of these sounds, rippling through all I cannot see, is interrupted by a deep sigh, rising sharply only to flatten into a peace indescribable in its completeness. How I envy the fifteen year old dog, whose sleeping face I can see the outline of as a car passes. We are having the same kind of lameness in our right shoulders, she and I, though for different reasons. And yet, she is exhausted and comfortable, while I am searching for something to occupy my mind. Something other than pain and its entourage, worry and fear.
When one is lost, the answer is always breathe. And, so I do, letting the dogs help me along, until I can feel my posterior ribs resting onto my mat and the boom boom boom of my beating heart echoing in spaciousness. Next, I feel my sacrum settle into its corners, and both scapulae into theirs. My feet spread onto the floor, connected to the stability of earth. All parts touch equally.
As so often happens, my thoughts drift to you, my patients, and to your questions about how to know when you are doing a movement correctly and how to know when you are balanced. In the physical body, balance is an ever-shifting relationship between stability and movement. Our feet press down while our heads reach up. Movement is as effortless as stillness. All parts touch equally.
I smile into the dark, imagining your face as I speak these words to you. The smile broadens as I maintain contact with the floor and float my torso upward, inhaling into a bridge pose. I scan for tension, make some adjustments to my feet, my hips, my face. Feeling stable here, I can relax. And I can be here, patiently observing what happens. Ease in the body can only come when our efforts are equal with our awareness. All parts touch equally.
I am no longer feeling so far from home. As I let my breathing drift through each of my bodies -- physical, emotional/mental, energetic/spiritual -- I am contented in their alignment, a stranger no longer. Each body, each aspect of myself, equal in effort and awareness -- all touching equally.