original post June 1, 2014

Question, pondering
What does it mean to remember and perceive from my back, not my eyes and ears?

Participating in Angela Farmer’s five-day yoga workshop in Yellow Springs, Ohio, November 5-9, 2011, triggers my exploration of this question. Yoga from the inside out, that’s the simple explanation of Angela Farmer’s approach. It reminds me of my years studying the intricacies of bodymind with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen. For Angela the starting point for asana practice is inner state perception and then discovering where that blossoms into movement forms. (Angela Farmer:http://www.angela-victor.com)

Workshop day one: Vividly in my mind’s eye I see Angela standing on the stage, bent forward like a Sandhill Crane searching for food on the ground, rotating her arms like wings behind her and sweeping her forearms over her back. “Here,” she says, “is where we heard our mother’s heartbeat, the gurgling of her stomach.” Sixty of us are listening, watching, sensing. Our breaths are asynchronous, individual. Each nose, lungs and throat cavity molded by the personal life events that brought each of us to this day. Angela stirs memories of deep home, the one our backs recorded from before birth.

Later, after a series of twists, we are listening and moving in our own exploration process. I slow into stillness, resting on my back, noticing how I simultaneously melt into the ground and am held up by it. Earlier Angela planted the idea to sense how we connect all the way to the core of earth even while our head resonates with the galaxies above. Earth alone beckons me now. As I rest, feeling support across the width of my ribs and pelvis, down the length of my legs, into my head, I am aware of my beating heart. An image arises of our yoga room as a meadow under a deep black sky, our hearts pumping on the surface of earth. For this instant I perceive our many hearts beating together. My perceptual point of view is both ground beneath the beating and witnessing from ground level, watching the pumping action that looks like bubbling mud pots. I hear our hearts become a choir, expressions of one source, singing “we remember, we are living healing for all.” I feel no need for any action.

Workshop day five: We are on our last day of exploring together, beginning to make the internal transition of crystallizing insights and commitment to on-going personal exploration practices. I end up in a pod of other participants to share words and individual expressions of our experiences. After a few minutes we switch from words to leaning into one another; utilizing contact improv yoga to communicate. I am lying face down with three people in varying degrees leaned on top of me. I sense again that I have become earth, not a body held apart from ground. I lay still for a long time, appreciating that when I yield into ground, support of others is effortless.

As the group shifts to discussion amongst the room at large I am tempted by automatic behavior to sit up and turn my attention to each speaker. But the hunger to remain horizontal is stronger. Throughout our retreat together Angela has used the imagery of a double-sided lotus flower, one blossom opened downward and one upward, and I sense this now in the area behind my heart. The downward blossom fills my chest cavity and sends roots wide out the front of my body into ground. My arms and legs have transformed into black soil. The upward blossom rises up from my rib cage, becomes my eyes and ears, my attention to others. I lie on the ground partially covered up and sense my capacity to witness without being upright, without proving my attention to anyone. Participating in this way is deliciously restful.

Two weeks later, back home: I walk in the woods on freshly fallen snow. The sun and wind shift rapidly and I respond with hat on, coat zipped, hat off, coat unzipped. Deer tracks cross my trail and go up the hillside. Three quarters of the way through the hike I remember to include perceiving through my back. I’m especially aware of my “back body” at the base of ribs and gap before the pelvis. Automatically I stand up taller and my eyes see further ahead. I feel more awake to the air on my skin. My ribs in the back open wider, my breath comes deeper and my eyes scan laterally. I move with more lightness even as I carefully step over a downed tree. Remembering to invite perception through my back is my new mindfulness exercise.