I practice gratitude today, for these, my bones. The rains have begun. The sky never quite admits to the time of day that’s beckoning. The firmament pulls a gray veil across its face and I have landed, after convincing myself to put in effort, on my yoga mat. As such deep, real sessions go, after a while I feel that efforting is not the way. Relinquishing is. This is not easy for me. It takes much practice to let go of attachments. During times like these, wrought with crisis after crisis in our family and the surreal feeling that we must be living in a dystopian story, being with my emotions without drowning in them is a chore. So, I mellow into the voice of my wise teacher who says to let my bones ground, to let gravity have them, without strain or tension. She echoes to just yield. I listen. I breathe. Little by little, I surrender.
It turns out that yielding is delicious, not just on and with these bones that have been cringing under weather changes and the heel bone fracture I’ve nursed through cast and boot and physical therapy and the seasons. I let the toes spread, the bones soften and weigh down, the joints mellow, the arm bones hang, the shoulders dangle, the jaw drop toward the feet. Yielding is the recipe to freedom on this day as the rain lulls me into a meditative state and my mind doesn’t drift but rather permeates the rhythm of nature and the gravitational pull of our Earth. Gentle detachment comes, sweetly, with a lightness of body and soul.
Conscious and confident, comfortable and compassionate toward others and myself, any aspects of myself, I just feel right, in this moment on my raft of a yoga mat. It’s a gift, this moment of pause, to be as a beloved dog can be: just here, truly in this moment. When I re-emerge slightly wistful with an appreciative nod toward the universe for having me, myself for allowing this experience, and yes, the crackly heel for playing along, a new acceptance sprouts, more in my heart than my head. For months, we’ve been walking the town’s cemetery to breathe with ease, inhale peace, exhale freedom amongst the trees and the deer and the squirrels and the crows. We’ve sought escape from reality. Now I know it was, is, a homecoming. Ground the bones, my teacher says, let them surrender. And grounding those bones means relinquishing them to our planet, to all the rich and wonderful layers that compose her unique beauty, to yield to her powerful pull, and to float within me, within her, and say: this shell, this magnificent body, it belongs to you.
May my bones go home when the times comes. May they return calmly, in harmony. This heaviness of my bones, it tells a story of life in this world and of human strength and frailty at the same time. Surprisingly, it comes with a marvelous levity of the spirit. Today, I yield to my bones and to what is.
