Stacey Engels

As I’ve been doing for the past couple of weeks, I tell this morning’s instructor before the 6:30 class that my lower back is seized up. I keep coming, and it is surprising what I am able to do – but there are a couple of postures I have just been sitting out.

He says, when I tell him, “Uh huh? Don’t decide in advance.”

This is this guy, telling me to experiment a little with the backbends:

Okay, Eoin. And without dropping all the way down in the reptilian brain of my defensiveness, I say, “Actually, I’m doing okay with the backbends. It’s the controlled forward bends –”  and he says, “Uh huh, don’t even think about the back, think about the abdomen.”

He’s right. It is only in the past couple of days that I have been able to really feel my core again. Which is the center of the body’s power. Disconnect from that, and all the other pieces aren’t able to work in harmony, or at optimum capacity.

Eoin, pronounced “Owen”, is today’s first annoying little angel, telling me exactly what I need to hear, even before sunrise. I follow his directive to look at myself in the mirror. I see a different kind of determination there – the quiet, soft determination to not decide my limitations. To respect the truth that I will surprise myself if I don’t tell myself what I’m incapable of.

It is a very melty, weepy, angry, sad, shame-filled, nausea-provoking, scary class. An awesome class. My legs shake so violently I look like I am going through an exorcism, which undoubtedly I am. I haven’t been this close to free from the pain in my back in almost two weeks. And what has been coming up and out, in tears, in pain, in feelings, in waves of queaze and dizziness, is considerably more ancient than that.

It is during the final Sivasana, corpse pose, that I find myself thinking that writers are the only ones who officially have a “block” named after them. You don’t hear about “painter’s block” or “musician’s block” or “dancer’s block”. Of course, all artists speak of “dry spells”, even “droughts”; but why has writing earned itself a special name for a special disease?

The conclusion that comes to me as I lie there is that words have a special power to force you to face the truth. Certain things, once articulated verbally, can never be fully buried or run from again. They demand your forward movement. And my teacher’s words this morning – Don’t decide in advance – apply to creative process, and to all things we want and fear, as much as they do to yoga.

*Thank Goodness I’m Flexible

He may think he’s talking about martial art, and acting…

To me, at least when I teach it, all type of knowledge ultimately means self-knowledge. So therefore, they’re coming in and ask me to teach them not so much of how to defend themselves or how to do somebody in – rather, they want to learn to express themselves, through some movement, be it anger, determination… he is paying me to show him, in combative form, the art of expressing [the human body].

Here is the natural instinct, and here is control. You are to combine the two in harmony. If you have one to the extreme, you will be very unscientific. If you have another to the extreme, you become, all of a sudden, a mechanical man, no longer a human being.

I do not believe in styles anymore. Styles tend not only to separate man, because they have their own doctrines and then the doctrines became the gospel truth that you can not change, you know – you can just say ‘Here I am as a human being, how can I express myself, totally and completely?’ Style is a crystallization, but [true expression] is a process of continuing growth. 

To me, ultimately martial art means honestly expressing yourself. It’s very difficult to do. It is easy for me to put on a show and be cocky, and be flooded with a cocky feeling, and feel pretty cool and all that. I can make all kinds of phony things, I can show you some really fancy movement, but to express oneself honestly, not lying to oneself, that, my friend, is very hard to do, and you have to train, you have to keep your reflexes, so that when you want it, it’s there. 

…You know what I want to think of myself? As a human being. Because under the sky, under the heaven, there is but one family. It just so happen, man, that people are different. 

Be Water, My Friend