Link

If you’ve ever been in a yoga class where the teacher asked you to “find the yoga between the poses,” you may have wondered just where that yoga was hiding. With so much to think about—breath, alignment, gravity—while listening for directions about what to do next, it somehow doesn’t seem fair or feasible to add hide and seek to the flow.

Think of it as a cue that’s more about journey than destination. In a vinyasa practice, it’s the action that links Trikonasana (Triangle) and Ardha Chandrasana (Half Moon). It’s the inhale that guides the step forward, the sense of the supporting foot receiving balance and energy, the fingertips lightly meeting the floor or block, the exhale as the body unfurls into the pose. It’s pause, prep, transition and grounding.

In a Sun Salutation, it’s the fold to Uttanasana, the step-back to Plank; the descend through Chaturanga Dandasana to Upward Dog; the elegant sweep from Up to Down Dog; the step or jump forward. Like a dance within a dance, these essential links are themselves a practice even while informing and enriching the whole.

The word link is of course both noun (something that enables communication between two people, things or situations) and verb (connect or join physically), but my favorite definition has historical roots. In the early 16th century, link referred to a torch of pitch for lighting the way on dark streets.

There’s a lot of yoga hidden between poses. Find that link to brighten the journey and illuminate the destination.

Uniformity

Ragged Island is at the very tip of the Jumentos Cays, a crescent moon shaped island chain in the far southwest Bahamas. It has a population of sixty hearty souls who share nine square miles of sand, salt ponds, coconut palms and one DC-10 airplane wreck that for years was a bar but is now a family home.

It may be smack in the middle of the middle of nowhere, but there is nothing ragged about Ragged. The landing strip is being extended, a new harbor dug and Duncan Town, the island’s only settlement, has a clean and hopeful look. Every day nine children report to the All-Age Primary School dressed in crisp white shirts and plaid skirts (girls) or black pants (boys). The teachers, a married couple from Guyana, are responsible for preparing these students for secondary school available only on other, more populated islands.

Despite the fact that Ragged Island is nothing more than a tiny dot in a vast ocean, as is far away from rules, regulations and watchful eyes, school starts on time. The kids are respectful, neat and polite. There is a schedule and it is followed. Lots of learning takes place.

Several days ago during a morning yoga practice, I found myself hurried and distracted. I cut short my warm-up and pieced together poses without much thought or intention. When I heard the beep of an incoming e-mail I left the mat to see who it was. Ten minutes later, I left again to answer the phone.

Later, resting in an unearned Savasana, I made a pledge: When I step onto this rectangular island I will show it the respect it deserves. I will start with a plan, and maintain a focused practice even as it evolves and changes. I will close with my palms together in a seal of gratitude. And if the computer beeps or the phone rings, I’ll think of nine children in uniforms sitting in a classroom in the middle of the middle of nowhere, and stay right where I am.

In Season. Organic. Locally Grown.

In standing postures, once the feet are awake and sending energy up the leg, a natural current of power is created between the heel and the sitting bones of the pelvis. “Sitting bones” is a much friendlier way to refer to the ischial tuberosities, which sounds like something a beet would sprout if left too long in the ground.

Whatever you call it, this sit-bone to heel connection has everything to do with how well the energy you’ve generated ultimately transmits from the pelvis into the spine. When you line up the sitting bone with the same-side heel you’ll immediately feel a change in your base of support. It’s one of the best ways I know to self-adjust postures like Virabhadrasana I & II (Warrior I & II), Trikonasana (Triangle) and Parsvakonasana (Extended Side-Angle).

Why is this important? Because if your ischial tuberosities have drifted away from the line of energy your foot is so cheerfully delivering, you start working really hard at a poses that should make you feel glad you’re alive, not wish you were doing something else, like digging beets.

Here’s how to plug into that powerful energy stream: Step into a Warrior II stance with the right leg leading. Before you bend the knee, imagine a straight line running from the heel of the right foot to the instep of the back (left) foot. Now as you bend the right knee towards 90º, bring the center of the knee and the right sit-bone onto that line extending from the right heel. Widen the stance if you need to; when you look down you should only see the big toe of the right foot.

Now, take a breath, let the soles of both feet dance in place then feel for a zing of happy as it rockets to the top of your noble and deserving head. Smile. Eat your beets.

Magic Afoot

It’s one thing to try and stay relaxed while learning or practicing a standing pose, and often another to actually do it. We’d like it to feel easier, more natural, and there are those magic moments when it does. You’re balanced, you’re breathing, on the fast track to bliss. The only thing missing is the assurance you’ll be able to find that happy place the next time you practice.

But even David Copperfield would say the most elegant, transcending magic starts with a few basic tricks. He might tell an aspiring magician to practice his illusions; I’d say masterful sleight of hand for standing yoga poses starts with the feet.

“Ladies and Gentlemen! May I have a volunteer from the audience? How about you, madam? Please come forward. Now, pick a pose, any pose, as long as at least one foot is on the ground. Ah, nice choice. May I present Virabhadrasana II, ladies and gentlemen, otherwise known as Warrior II.

First notice our volunteer’s alignment: front knee over the ankle and bent near or to 90º; center of knee points the same direction as the center of the foot; front sit bone is tucked under; back thigh pressed back, front pelvis slightly lifted off the thigh. Observe her shoulders aligned above the hips, her spine lightly lengthened, chest open to the side, arms extended at shoulder height as she gazes beyond the leading hand's fingertips.

Now watch closely! This pose is about to change before your very eyes! Madam, please bring your attention to your feet. Spread the toes and liven the arches. Feel for even contact under the soles then gently press them into the earth. Think yield. Imagine that the more you yield, the more your feet conduct the energy surrounding you from air and earth, pulsing prana (chi), into every cell of your body. Ladies and gentlemen, please observe: she no longer holds the pose, the pose holds her.

I’m going to walk all around our volunteer. There are no props, no strings, no gimmicks. But there is magic afoot.

Clutter Cutting

Sometimes I think we yoga enthusiasts get lost in all our gentle terminology; words like cultivate, allow, engage, effortless. There’s nothing wrong with the words. They’re great words. Any one of them (and dozens more like them), can be the cue that changes how we experience a pose, a breath or a concept.

It’s when the words blend into blah, blah, blah patois that “gentle” can fade to anemic. Yoga Muzak may be more pleasant to listen to than elevator Muzak, but it’s still background noise.

What if you took a yoga class and on that day there was a posture that just wasn’t happening for you. And your teacher, instead of putting on a pair of white gloves and making a tasteful suggestion, took one look at you and said, “Dude. That is so not even close.”

You know I’m kidding, but every now and then it might be refreshing to let some breeze blow through what can sometimes feel like a rarified atmosphere. In the olden days, when I was in the advertising profession, we talked about “cutting the clutter.” If yoga is a method, a technology, for cutting through the clutter in our lives to find the hidden bit of “real” we know is there, doesn’t it make sense to keep our language clean, direct and sometimes startling?

Which brings me to a story about one of my yoga school buddies. (You know who you are, you of the cute new dress in Todos Santos who wishes she hadn’t eaten the fish from the street stall.) One afternoon, she was teaching our group and while I don’t remember the exact pose we were in, some of us began to get a little tired and some of us decided to exit said pose without explicit permission from our leader, who then spun around, glared at us and shouted, “You WIMPS!”

I guess it was just her way of suggesting that we allow ourselves to cultivate more energy.

Something to Declare

I have a wonderful 78-year-old friend who lives next door, next door being a quarter of a mile away. June is from Fort Vermillion in Alberta, Canada, which is north of Edmonton, which is already north of just about everywhere else in the world. She is who Meryl Streep’s character in “Out of Africa” would have become if she’d stayed in Africa instead of going back to Denmark.

For the last thirty years June has traversed Crooked Island’s backroads, first by scooter, later by van, taking food and a listening ear to folks from Cripple Hill to True Blue. She knows everyone. Everyone knows her. She is much beloved.

But even though June specializes in selflessness, I guess you don’t grow up in Fort Vermillion without learning how to take care of yourself, too. So every now and then she announces it’s a National Holiday.

National Holidays can be declared for any number of reasons, or no reason. On National Holidays you don’t owe anyone (including yourself) an explanation for anything. The day is yours.

There’s a world of difference between thinking or saying “I’m stressed, I’m sad, I need a break, and hot dog, it’s a National Holiday.” One feels like defeat, the other, celebration.

We all work really, really hard at being good at everything we do in life. On a National Holiday, deserving Third Island friends, you will be held accountable for one thing and one thing only: the quality and longevity of your savasana.

Gated Community

Some people meet through their spouses. Some through their kids. Two decades ago my friend Carla and I met through our horses. We had the same trainer, and though we usually took lessons on different days, we (and our horses) spent years together jumping fences in arenas and on desert mesas, walking mountain trails, galloping across fields. There are some experiences in my life I would trade, but not those.

Many of the other riders in our hunter-jumper barn were teenaged girls with fancy, expensive horses. Typically, they’d arrive before a scheduled lesson, groom and tack up their mounts, walk to the arena, warm-up, jump whatever was set up for them, cool-down, dismount, walk back to the barn, etc.

Week after week, they repeated the process. Most got really good at jumping fences in a gated arena and won many ribbons at horse shows. Carla and I won ribbons, too (well, mostly she did), but much of the joy I found riding came from the out-of-arena experiences we had.

The other day someone told me about a friend who’d said she couldn’t do yoga for a couple of weeks. Why? Because she was on her way to visit a relative in a town that didn’t have a studio dedicated to the particular style she practiced.

That's when I started thinking about horses, jumping, arenas and this bit of wisdom from Rumi:

“...there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”

In other words, open the gate.