DAY 4: A POEM OF POSTURES

Day 4:

Yoga is so beautiful. When I’m on my mat, mindfully moving my body into a poem of postures, I smile, I am in bliss. Nothing can harm me on my mat, I am safe. I am beautiful, I am free. In yoga, there is no judgement, no competition. No one expects anything of me, yet I expect everything from myself. I am not pressured by external influences, I go at my own pace, I push myself when I feel comfortable. I sit in Sukasana, knees bent, one foot in front of the other; avoiding the act of crossing my legs as it places tension on the joints. I take another cushion to sit on because my hip-bones hurt. Lightly touching my thumb with my fore-finger, creating Jnana mudra, the mudra of wisdom, a hand gesture which increases energy in the body. Breathing in and out of my nostrils, I inhale into my belly as it expands out. As I exhale, my tummy deflates into my body. BREATHE. I forget about the room, the hot sun shining down on my back through the windows, the tightness in my left hip-joint. I focus on my breathing, everyone else seems to disappear, not because I want them to but because I am so caught in my own breath; I can’t concentrate on everyone else’s actions. Suddenly, my torso starts moving back and forth, slightly, only a tiny bit but enough I can notice. It feels good; I feel peaceful moving, breathing, and creating energy. A moment passes; was it a moment? Was it an hour? Was it a year? I dart open my eyes, afraid that I’ve completely lost touch with reality. Looking around, I check my body. I haven’t been breathing! My mind suddenly realizes that I can’t remember the last time I took a breath. I’m not dying, I’m not searching for breath, I just haven’t taken one. I quickly inhale, just out of habit, out of the need to fill my lungs because that’s what I’ve been taught. “What was that?” I ask myself, “Why wasn’t I breathing?”. “Where was I?”

I learn later that the ancient yogis would stick their head in the sand for hours or days without breathing. It was said that they converted prana, or energy, into the oxygen requirement. That was how they were able to stay in the ground, meditating or contemplating, for that amount of time. I don’t know what happened to me, but I love fantasizing about the fact that I may have converted my energy into oxygen.

In lecture today, we talked about the three groups that humanity is divided into: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. Visual people use a lot of adjectives and descriptive words; they think in images. Auditory people use language that relates to sound; they perceive reality through sound and understand something best when they hear it described. Kinesthetic people understand through feeling and touching and use language relating to how they felt different aspects of reality. Their knowing occurs through physical movement and touching other people or objects. 

In the regular school system, the school combines all of humanity (all three groups) into one classroom. In kindergarten, all the three types are engaged: visual kids are interested in all the bright colours and posters; the auditory kids are intrigued by songs and rhythmic repeating of sounds; and the kinesthetic kids are engaged by the toys, painting, and crafts. However, after this year, all of a sudden the kids are put into a classroom that doesn’t have all these aspects. The visual students may be engaged from the chalkboard and the auditory students can be stimulated from the lecture, but there is hardly anything for the kinesthetic. Even the visual and auditory students suffer from the lack of diversity in their areas. This is why some people thrive in elementary school and suffer in high school. My boyfriend Doug is a great example of this. He excelled in some years of elementary school because he is highly kinesthetic and there were more art projects and creativity involved in these years. However, once he reached high school, his grades fell tremendously and he wasn’t able to become fully engage because nothing he was taught fell into his hands (literally). It was more directed at the auditory and visual students, even still lacking in my opinion. Now he is at an art school where his kinesthetic side is completely involved and he is getting the best grades in the class! 

This reality makes me frustrated. Being homeschooled for most of my years in school, I don’t know how I will ever send my kids to regular school. There is just so much more I learned about myself, about how to live in the real world, and about how to relate to people on a different level than with people my age. I feel like I’ve just had so many more experiences, even without traveling on the boat, that is a result from being homeschooled than other people at the regular schools. What am I to do then, if I want to be successful with my career and raise my kids the way I want? I want to do both, and I don’t think anyone telling me I can’t is going to help me at all. I HAVE TO FIND A WAY! Actually, if anyone tells me I can’t do anything, I immediately want to do it. Just ask my parents! If they said don’t jump off the bridge, I’d jump. Don’t cross the street! I’m crossing. In some areas, that may be just ignorant stubbornness. However, I’d like to think that you never get anywhere standing still -- right Dad?