So I won't be joining The Girls this weekend. At least it doesn't look like it. MEH and I may make our way down to Cooper Landing for some time away from the city. Who knows though. He's not particularly well known for planning ahead . . . In light of this potential non-hike, I found one of my workshop drafts (emphasize draft) of a piece I wrote several years ago, called "Flat Top Yoga." I wrote it shortly after moving back to Anchorage from Las Vegas. It certainly needs some work. In fact, it may just be scrap work, but hey, it's something.
“Doing yoga is a lot like climbing a mountain," Kim says in that tone common to yoga instructors - one so slightly above a whisper, as if they are experiencing a little bit of nirvana then and there.
I lay in Child’s pose; sweat beading down my face, nose, neck, and shins. The studio is small, warmed by the heat of a dozen other bodies. A student excuses himself to grab a Dixie cup of water under the Namaste sign and the floor boards creak underneath the pads of his feet. His breath is a steady hum: the sound of the sea massaging the shore; it is a deep ujayii breath to keep his spirit heated. My breath is loud, my body warm.
Flat Top in Anchorage on a glassy July evening. I pull my car key off the chain, unwrap my earphones from my i-pod, plug in, and head off to the stairs of the trail, legs limber from the hour and a half of hip-openers and forward bends.
The parking lot at Chugach park is full. Subarus, Jeeps, and various hooptie cars spill from the lot and onto the gravel road, tightening the already narrow road. “Go Organic” and “AK” stickers hang onto rusty bumpers. An aging Subaru says “I heart marathons.” A man in his forties walks by, a soaking white bandanna around his forehead. His exhales are heavy. He nods and continues on by.
I hop over rocks, around flowers and trees. Dogs and families move around the trail. There is a girl in flip-flops probably realizing this was a very, very bad idea. Twenty-somethings who just got off work and decided today looked like a beautiful day to go out and climb a mountain grab a Nalgene bottle and go; families with small children bring their aging black lab. They will take a couple of hours. Their sons and daughters will probably beat them up the climb. I switch between power-hiking and running up various portions of the mountain. In my two-year-old sneakers and cotton tank top I realize I know less about running up a mountain than I thought I did five minutes ago. Seasoned runners in dirt-encrusted shoes, mp3 players strapped to their biceps, sweat and muscle to the top
I come to my hands and knees then onto my back, arms and legs splayed wide, for chavasana. I smile to myself, thinking of a previous teacher touching his japa mala beads and whispering to the class “let your each thought be a grain of sand, and let it float away.” As I begin contemplating what to have for dinner, what bill I didn’t pay, and hundreds of extraneous thoughts, Kim says again:
"Yoga is a lot like climbing a mountain.”
You start with heavy intentions, open to possibilities with which you may or may not be presented. New challenges. New trails. You may sweat it out long term or find a quicker path. You may quit and turn around. You may pause and continue on. You are always pausing to continue on. Bend further into Chair pose. Lift higher in Bridge. Hold Warrior longer. Make the last breath of any pose the finest breath of the pose. And it may take you awhile, but you will reach the top.
I see old friends and acquaintances; we pause and stop to look out over the inlet, over the city to a view that reminds us why we live in a place that we live in: three months of uninterrupted beauty. It is 9:30pm and not yet sunset and a mist of clouds hover over the mountain of Sleeping Lady and downtown, turning the city a lazy lavender. I watch the tide of Cook Inlet recede quickly, exposing yards of mud and sand reflecting the wet purple color. A mosquito sucks on my shoulder.
I cannot listen to fast-paced music when I run. The rhythms of hip-hop, pop, and rock, are lost on my pacing. Always acoustic. Always folk. Songs with complicated lyrics force me to focus on everything except how tired I am. Take in the city. Watch for tourists pausing in the middle of the staircase. Smell the freshness of moss and gravel and damp dirt only awake at the tops of mountains. A favorite artist sings to me to “climb up over the top, survey the state of the soul . . .”
There are other mountains around you yet to be traveled. Yet to be paused upon. And you extend into the bind , lift out of the modification, complete the inversion. All the while you pause and reflect. Reconnect with the breath and heartbeat. Appreciate it. Even the tension in your thighs that is making your legs feel as if, were you to push down any further into this balance, you might both tip over and watch all of your muscle tissue come spilling out onto the floor, you must pause to appreciate it. Pause and be reminded of why you are here, sweating in an non-air-conditioned room heated to 100 degrees with a dozen other men and women, balancing on one foot while the other is firmly planted in your hands, parallel to the floor. Reconnect with the sound of your heart expanding into your feet, your shoulders, your fingers. Reflect on whatever intention you set an hour ago and cling to it.
The goal-oriented hikers are yelling down to their friends to hurry up and stop being pussies because a damn girl just beat them up the mountain and they were all talking shit about how they'd be the first to the top.
I turn off my i-pod as I reach the summit that, quite truly, crawls with a buzz of locals and not-so-locals, locals who have never been here, locals who do this everyday. And you always know the difference by the looks of simple accomplishment, astonishment, or abject fatigue smattered on any face. I walk to the spot shining in the not-yet sunset lying back onto the moss and grass and rocks, closing my eyes. Wind on Flat Top is different than wind anywhere else in the city. There are no trees or high grass to hear it through. It flows through nothing, picks up speed through nothing. You feel it only over the downy hairs on your face and the rippling of your clothes. Organic silence.
Jason Mraz continues to mumble through melody, “You’ve got to find out for yourself/whether or not you’re truly trying.” And as an Alaskan, a woman, who has come back to Alaska for a lack of belonging elsewhere, I question. I question if leaving is always a form of running away; if it is a form of returning. If returning to one’s roots and the familiar can cure a fear, or only cripple you back into old habits. Gazing at this postcard pastel sky, I don’t know,. I don’t think so.. I begin to believe that returning anywhere after an intense change of self, you are forced to look at that place infant eyes. I begin to believe that climbing a mountain doesn’t mean climbing just one steep slope, but that you continue up one hill to the next, to the next and then to the peak.
"And then you come back down. . ."
A man deciding that he wants to imitate a billy-goat jumps down the trail at a speed unnecessary and rather unsafe, for he slips every other step. Rocks spill toward wary climbers. I hop, skip, and jump. And then I get to where I can run and hear my breath and feel the rocks and earth. Hear the chitter of others still climbing up. I descend with the sunset. I push my legs almost faster than they are willing down the stairs. I pass fellow climbers who look and watch, as I go by, wondering what I must be running from - wondering why anyone would want to run down any mountain. My knees are pleading. I feel a blister on a toe in my right foot. Speckles of dirt spray up my legs and shorts. The expanse of sky turns more shades of sherbet and I feel my face blanch, sweat escapes down my forehead, into my eyes, and off of my chin. A moose meanders onto the trail in front of me and I dive around, almost slipping on the gravel, warning other walkers and runners and families with dogs that they would be wise to take the more scenic route today.
Sprinting around corners and down dips and up inclines at some point I feel like I could almost kick off and glide past the fireweed. And then as I conclude my run I am reminded of why living in a state as overwhelmingly passionate for life as Alaska defies my questioning. It goes on and on, constantly in revolutions with itself.
I forget that I am forgetting. Every vertebra aligns with the floor. I feel heat in my palms, in the crescents of my feet. And then there are chimes in the corner of the room, sounding three times, taking long pauses. Kim with her cloud of red hair sits in the center of the room; she rests on her knees. She watches the quiet bodies beginning to stir – children rolling over between dreaming and waking –
". . .Drift back into the present."
I started my yoga journey in the spring of 2005. DMsS took me to a yoga class at the Dimond Athletic Club and I have been hooked since. I may have strayed from that path at times, even for months at a time, but the principles and ideals expressed within its teachings, specifically that of Ashtanga, have stuck with me. Some of the questions I ask in the piece I have answered, but those are for a different story, hopefully to be fleshed out soon in the future.
On a light note, my food!:
From left to right, Stacey's Pita Chips, orzo, two bananas, Odwalla Super Food, medjool dates, kalamata olives, and Dark Chocolate Dreams Peanut Butter. The peanut butter will go on bananas or pita chips or the dates. Who knows. I'm a grazer of this highest order.
Mantra of the Day:
Om Sahanaa Vavatu Sahanau Bhunaktu
Saha Veeryam Karavaavahai
Tejasvi Naavadheetamastu Maa Vidvishaavahai
Om Shantih Shantih Shantih"
Translated it means : "OM. Let all of us protect each other together, may all of us enjoy together, may all of us work together and let our study become radiant. Let there be no hatred between us, OM Peace, Peace, Peace." This is a peace mantra, or a shanti mantra . These are repeated to promote, well, peace. I have never used this specific mantra, but have found several shanti mantras to be quite helpful and healing. I liked the meaning behind this one. I once used "Om Shanti Shanti Shanti" when hiking back from Kalalau Valley
in the pouring rain. I really was convinced I was going to die. Until I went back in March with MEH, I had never been so scared in my life. And then I hiked it with the love of my life, thought both of us were going to die, and for the first time, also in my life, the fear of loss was a tangible thing. I could taste it. And it was real and very much in front of (well, behind me, since MEH was behind me) me for a whole mile. The mantra, if anything could have, calmed me down both times. And on the return with MEH, reminding myself that "I am loved and I am safe," did the trick, too.
Question of Gratitude Who, or what, are you grateful for today? Today, on Yoga Thursday, I am grateful for my practice. It's a return to commitment and calm that I have much needed and looked forward to. I am reminded of my physical and inner strength, that of others, and the promise that things are all even in the end.
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