Mermaid and My Move Back To Reno with Kim at Yoga Loka: Reno, Nevada: May 6, 2018
Mermaid was one of my first bendy poses and she feels as good as slipping into a pair of well worn bluejeans. Until Kim offered Mermaid from a lunge. photo: Michael Hannig, Maui.
I love mermaid pose. I jump into her relatively easily and once I get there, the stretch feels amazing.
I wonder if it feels so good because of all the layers of pain, mental and physical, that I've melted through years of practice. I wonder if its simply a matter that my body is put together that way. I wonder if its because I still find this shape interesting because it safely accesses avenues of contemplation and interesting things still come up. As Karl Jung says, "the miracle is finding light in the darkness" and mermaid pose is a miracle pose for me.
Moving back to Reno is a miracle for me. When I left 13 years ago I was at my all time life low and I swore I'd never move back. Loaded, and I use that term in all its colloquial splendor, so heavy on life the only solace was either yoga or a great glass of chardonnay. 9 times out of 10 chardonnay won so you can imagine my misery.
Erich Schiffman said, "the world doesn't need to change in order for you to to start to seeing it radically different". As I drive around Reno today, building my new home, I find myself saying, "wow it is really pretty here". Why didn't I see it before? Peace, beauty, happiness, abundance are all states of mind. It is the belief or the lack thereof that creates our experience of it. Certainly my external circumstances have changed, but its my internal landscape that's altogether different. In fact, if anything there is greater demands on me in every way, including 12 long years of getting older. It is not logical I can bend into mermaid today where 12 years ago I could not. It is not logical that I moved back to Reno after having such a bad break up with her, but here I am, and am happy about it all to boot.
Maybe I love mermaid pose because she's a close cousin to king pigeon pose, and I want a graceful king pigeon in the worst way. In a recent photo shoot in Maui I was hoping it would be the kind of day my body would bend right into her but it wasn't. But it was so much fun and I was so happy on that beautiful Maui beach that it felt even better than a picture perfect pose.
I was laughing to hard to get into King Pigeon.
In class today I was resting in my mermaid, and even for a fleeting second feeling smug. Until the second round when Kim offered a mermaid variation from lunge .I felt like a beginner mermaid. But it was interesting and exciting. It was a fresh new take on an old shape. It felt exactly like my move back to Reno, Nevada.
Health, Love, and Rock n Roll.