Back to Back

Last night in Adaptive Yoga we were volunteer heavy. Adaptive yoga is a class specifically designed for students with significant mobility issues. Volunteers assist in helping the students to move their bodies into poses and act as props or supports to facilitate certain postures.

Since there were a lot of volunteers, I opted to just observe. It had been a few weeks since I was at class and I wanted to get back in the groove. About halfway into the class, an additional student, Carl, came and we were suddenly in need of my volunteer support.

Carl arrived just as the class was getting ready to transition from chairs to the floor. This process takes a bit of time because volunteers have to transfer each student from their wheelchair to the floor mats. Once Carl was transferred, Joan, another volunteer, and I worked with Carl. Carl is maybe 30 years old, about 6'2" with a strong, athletic build. Carl is paralyzed almost entirely from his neck down with some very specific and limited movement in his arms.

The first exercise on the floor was to go back to back and work on forward and back bends and then side to side flexion. Because Carl and I are both tall, I volunteered to be back to back with him for this exercise. The teacher Kelly and volunteer Joan helped support Carl while I shimmied in behind him and found a comfortable place where we could both balance. Kelly and Joan helped us to hook our arms with each other  and we began moving forward and back and side to side with Nicole's (another teacher) cues.

"I don't have much control", Carl said,  as I folded forward supporting the length of his torso on my back. Then I pushed him back up and laid my upper body weight onto the length of his back. Back and forth we went.

I've done this posture before. About a year ago, I taught a room of couples for a Valentine's Day Yin workshop and was surprised by how challenging it was, even for couples, to let go of control and give in to the posture. I noticed right away how comfortable and relaxed I was doing this posture with Carl. Was it me knowing of his inability to control his body that gave me permission to let go of my grip on the posture?  Was it the vulnerability he modeled when he said, "I don't have much control?"

I think it was both, and I consider the experience a moment of grace, one of those magical moments where I both learn something profound and feel an overwhelming surge of gratitude. In Yin today, I shared this story with my students."Try releasing some of your own control in these postures," I said. I wanted them to feel what I felt, to energetically receive the release that came from really letting go.

I don't know if it worked. I really hope it did.

Betty.

A few weeks ago, I was paired with Betty at Adaptive Yoga.  Betty does not use a wheelchair; she has full use of her whole body, but she likes the class.  In adaptive yoga, volunteers like me facilitate movement for people who have limited mobility. Often we do hip openers by moving the legs from bent to straight to bent again. Or we rotate the leg right and left in circles to bring some lubrication to the hip joints.

I offered to help Betty move her legs because, even if you can move your legs on your own, it often feels really good to surrender and let someone else do it for you. Like many people, Betty had a hard time relinquishing control in this exercise.  In fact, she did the opposite of relaxing into the movement.

A few things to know about Betty. She is little, maybe 4 feet 10 inches. And she's old, a surprisingly young, and strong 92 years old. And, she always wears a royal blue sweatsuit.  As I tried to help Betty through the hip circles (and she resisted) I couldn't get over how strong her little 92-year-old legs were. Betty was married to her husband for 68 years and he died last year. She started yoga as a way to keep busy, and healthy. She also started wearing magnetic bracelets and anklets to help channel energy that would help her back pain. She got that idea from the suggestion of a vendor at the mall.

As a yoga teacher, I am surrounded all the time by people who are pretty open-minded. But these people are in their 20s or 30s or 40s. When I was a kid, we used to visit my grandmother in the Drexel Home in South Chicago. Sometimes our school would go to do crafts and sing songs with the old people who lived there. I always loved the visits with my class and with my family. My grandmother and the other residents were always so appreciative. Old people have experienced so much more life and loss than the rest of us that they are simply wiser. What a gift it was to spend time, doing yoga no less, with this special nonagenarian!

As the class came to an end and everyone was getting comfortable in Savasana, the other teacher Nicole came over to Betty to ask her if she needed anything. Betty's eyes were already closed and her face emanated pure bliss. Her little blue sweatsuit-clad body was perfect as it was.  I looked down at her, watching her chest rise and fall with her breath, her anklets and bracelets slack on her ankles and wrists. "She's amazing," I thought to myself. Nicole and I shared a smile of appreciation for this beautiful soul before she moved on to check on the other students.

When I went home that night, I was, as I almost always am after teaching yoga, gleeful, excited, at peace, all at the same time. My heart was full of Betty, of all her goodness-- her open-mindedness, her faith in healing, her ability to be honest about managing the loss of her husband, her perseverance get herself to finally let go at the end of class. Gifts really do come in all sorts of packages.  Thank you Betty!

Human Kindness

Last week I had an experience that left me with an unsettled feeling-- a combination of gratitude and elation tinged with seeking and inspiration.  I feel its presence subtly, at different times during the day, but mostly when I'm teaching or practicing yoga. Kelly, a wonderful yoga student of mine and now teacher of me, invited me to help her in a class she teaches called Adaptive Yoga. Adaptive Yoga offers people with mobility restrictions (spinal cord injuries, Cerebral Palsy, Parkinson's Disease) accessible yoga instruction. And, as I experienced last week, it is so much more than that.

There were just two students in the class I attended, a small group for that session. One of the students was quadriplegic and the other paraplegic. Kelly and the other teacher Julie led the small group through seated postures and then moved them to the floor for a series of supine postures.

I hesitate to even try to describe my emotional experience in this class because I don't have the technical writing skills to really explain it. There were so many moments, moments when Kelly or Julie gently laid hands on a body that "couldn't feel." But was that right? Who was I to say what another person could feel. Watching the teachers, I was brought to the brink of tears. Why? I'm not sure. I've been trying to sort it out all week. I suspect that maybe it was the recognition of my own assumptions about people who are paralyzed. Or the beautiful message from the instructor to feel what was happening internally when the physical body was in a posture, regardless of their paralyzed status. The energy in the room, the combination of vulnerability, determination, and human kindness literally overwhelmed me.

What I'm left with in this time before I go back to volunteer again (which I plan to do as often as I can), is the sense of how small the world can become when we define "feeling" in only a handful of ways. I, being an able-bodied, fully "feeling" person, was knocked out of my comfortable state being a part of this class--- in a really good way. That unsettled feeling-- elation and gratitude and seeking and inspiration-- come to me when I practice. Today when Rachael had us do 27 sun salutations, I closed my eyes during a lot of it so that I could feel in a different way, a deeper way. And when I teach, I am so filled with gratitude for being able to teach yoga, a practice that goes beyond just physical postures. I am grateful to be in this newly seeking place, to explore more deeply myself and to be able to invite my students to do the same.  Thank you Kelly.