My Yoga Essay
<< 7:36 p.m. - Sunday, Aug. 31, 2008 >>
What does it mean, to you, to open to grace and live with a courageous heart?

Even in my short years on this earth, I already know a little about heartless existence and the lack of light in day to day living: I have shuffled through my life as if my body and spirit were strangers to me. I kept myself in my head for so long, that I forgot who I was. Being self-aware, I have discovered, is not simply about analyzing my every action and thought, it is a physical process as well. These days, when I walk the 20 blocks to Portland State University in the morning, I feel my steps propel me along the ground and I listen, more than ever before, to my breath. When I practice yoga alone and in classes, I strive for feeling and sensation in the midst of the quiet of my body and the noise of my head. Opening to grace, to me, speaks to an awareness of self: an articulate absorption.

I am here, I am here, I am here. I am always here, and I always have been, but sometimes I forget. In every moment that passes me by, I have found that I can pass every moment by as well, and it is not so much about being carried and pulled into the future, as it is to step boldly into it. Whereas in the past, I found myself looking back at my high school memories with a kind of longing, now I go for the opposite; I push myself too hard into the future and fantasize about things still far from my grasp. What I seek is to walk the fine line of the present, I am here, I am present.

I am not for instance, back in Bah�a de Kino, philosophizing beneath millions of stars nor am I graduated, moving down to Guadalajara to start a new life. I think that is why Fran told me what he did. The night the Spanish phrase �dejar caer� (to let fall) was whispered into my ear, I was about to leave the country for five months and even now a year later, the words still ring so true. Dejar caer breaks with my need for control and order, and has reminded me again and again to let things happen in their own way without force. I have been a person of meticulous order for years, arranging the books on my shelf in alphabetical order by author�s last name since I was in third grade, so the task of letting go is an ever-present process. At the same time, it has saved me. Letting go and living with a courageous heart are forces that do not force, they simply allow me to see that there is possibility in everything.

It was Francisco that first whispered those words into my ear, a year ago to this day but I hear references to them every day I spend apart from him. Miles, countries, fences, the Border Patrol, and our language separate us and yet we have made it this far. A year and a half of distance and longing and we have survived, matured, and even thrived. In the beginning it was harder, not being able to talk to him when I wanted, not knowing what was happening in his world, but most of all it was relinquishing the control I was sure I had. It is still difficult now, and every time a month passes, the situation changes, and we are brought new joys and challenges. I waited this whole summer for his interview with the U.S. embassy to visit me here, only to find that he was denied, and all the stress and anguish that came up before the date was for nothing � I never had a control over the decision my government would make.

In the end, I don�t have control. In the end, most of the events in my life are shaped by chance and influence of others. And yet, even as I am so bound by the present and the unknown I continue to slide into less firm states of being (the past and the future). Dejando caer is what has persuaded me to open so willingly to change and hardship and in turn let it shape me and allowed me to grow. Calling Fran seven times with no response, walking home and imagining him with me; his hand in mine, has done little to ease the ache of our apartness � it is a mutual faith, in myself and in him, knowing that we will get through this and I have open my eyes to the present.

I see �opening to grace� and �living courageously� as synomyns for dejar caer. I see my goal as riding the S-curve between the yin and the yang; the black and the white, the past and the present. Like the backbends I love, I strive to flexible and strong all in the same moment. Granted this cannot be a constant state, we all fall, we all fail, but we always have the chance to reattempt. I feel at times that my moments of sadness or desperation are steps backward, away from �opening to grace�, until I remember them for what they are; moments; places in time that ask me to reevaluate and to grow. In movement, of the body and the heart, there are weaknesses and unused muscles, but with patience and work what was once fragile can become strong and free; light and divine in its own very human way.