Day 10

Today is a new moon. I could feel it in the morning because my body was quiet and filled with an orange glow -- there was extra energy, and quiet energy today. I knew it for sure as soon as Ana walked in wearing all black instead of in full bloom like usual. I just checked and moonrise is in two hours.

Today was brutal. The morning was good, peaceful, orange light in my body and mind. She offered the practice to use to choose an intention for, like a physical or emotional area or focusing on not struggling in a posture. In my practice I concentrated on feeling the beauty of each pose, which is a really good strategy for me. I respond to beauty. I would envision my body in the ideal pose and the beauty of the pose in my mind helped energy flow better and the struggle to disspiate: I got stronger. I felt good.

On the way back from lunch, though, my low back felt extremely fragile. I got to the studio early and got to hang out in the good energy and sunny spot from the skylight, but as I practiced my next teaching poses my back got tweakier and tweakier until I felt like any small movement would throw it out. One of Ana's assistants gave me some energy, and it's better now, but through the afternoon practice it still felt pretty fragile and beforehand another trainee recommended some poses that had worked for her, such as Camel on the wall, which is a restorative backbend. Camel is maybe the most difficult pose for me. Everything hurts, including my low back, even on the wall. She got alarmed because I shouldn't be able to feel that pose in my low back, and got me to demo my tailbone tuck, and then got alarmed about that, too: "that's it?" She noticed I wasn't using my abs.

In the afternoon practice I felt like my body was injured everywhere... the low back, the knees, the shoulder (my bicep tendon, it turns out, not my rotator cuff, which is a good thing), the ankles, the elbows, the low abs. I paid more attention to my abs during afternoon practice and I kept on looking down when they were supposed to be engaged and there they were, just hangin' out. This makes me panic about reinjuring myself through every backbend, bind and sitting position, and the pelvis disconnect just seems so insurmountable. I still feel like not much has changed for me in terms of my bad patterns, and all this injury pointing to all this illness, and all this holding on was so overwhelming, it just felt like I'll never heal my injuries or stop my patterns, and I wanted to give up not just this training, but everything.

I'm watching and celebrating with these other people who are figuring out huge things and lighting their energy on fire. We're halfway through and I'm deeply afraid that I'm going to reach the end of this training the same that I cam in, and that it will be my fault for not caring enough to get off my ass and change my behavior.

Ana has a formula for this thinking, called: breathe, breathe more, think of something that lightens your spirit, breathe more, think of more things that brighten your spirit, breathe, and more breathing. But partly I don't feel like I have the energy to use that formula, and partly I'll end up efforting so hard I'll stress myself out about my inability to think of something that lightens my spirit, and partly when I uncry myself through breath I feel a little hollow, like I buried that outward energy flow back down, that I have more to cry that I denied exit.

I hope that this is a dark night of the soul, under a sky without a moon, and that it is a good signal heralding light and growth.