Song: “Monsters” – The Damn Quails
The pain emanated from my hips, back, shoulders, arms… Everywhere. The pain was everywhere. My arms were bent at the elbow, my nose hovering four inches above the floor. My shoulders trembled. I had been in this position for eternity. Aches and pangs had evolved into concussive grenades casting shrapnel into every square inch.
Why did I think this was going to be a good idea??
This was the fourth of seven classes we had each day. We started in darkness. The sun had long past set when we finished. Supposedly the first week was the hardest. My mind and body shared knowing glances, shook hands, then turned to me. They agreed.
Cruel men in loose fitting clothes were driving me to the edges of my limits; harsh task masters laughing as I told them how mean they were. They stood atop polished marble floors, bare brown feet grazing the mats as they passed. With kind, weathered eyes, they condemned our Western bullshit. They were here to break us, shape us, and remold us into something more than what we had dragged through their front doors.
“Hold!” The man yelled. A bright red dot was pasted to the center of his forehead. A clump of rice drooped, adhered either by faith or cheap red ochre. He smiled, firmly slapping the meat of my quads. I snarled as sweetly as I could manage. Apparently satisfied, he moved down the line.
“Hold!” He repeated. The ragged line of nylon-clad aspirants shook and quavered. Groans and furtive whines escaped from a dozen lips. The man smiled again.
“Hold!”
***
I sat on a thin foam mat in the same room, legs crossed in a mockery of the lotus position. Something was intensely wrong with my groin. But there was something wrong with damn near every part of my body. And it was no use thinking about it. There was no going back now.
The constant braying of donkeys and cows had slightly abated on the street below. Dimmed lights whispered down through the ancient curtains, accented slightly by a breeze seeping through the closed windows.
Two arm-lengths in front of me stood three battered blocks, neatly piled, a thin white candle affixed to the top. A timid flame twittered and danced, somehow mocking and inviting at the same time. My crooked, broken spine gently popped. More complaints to add to the pile…
The object of the lesson was to place one’s concentration entirely on the candle. No sweat. Easy-peasy. This was something I could do; that I had shown others how to do hundreds of times…
I remembered the octagonal temple in the middle of the shaman’s camp back in Sedona. I’d felt safe there, with thick, shag carpet beneath my toes, and the smell of burnt sage dominating the air. It’d been easy to focus then.
My mind jumped again. Suddenly, I was back on the beach south of Kalfafell, ice water surging around my ankles. The cold bit deep into the veins of my leg, a stark juxtaposition to the raging, pulsing magma erupting through my central cavity. I could feel my eyes bulging and the weight of a giant hand on my shoulder…
Shit.
No wonder the teacher had mocked me. I couldn’t hold a straight line of thought even when I tried. This had, no doubt, leaked out into every aspect of my life. I was an even bigger mess than I thought. It was time to get serious. Or maybe less serious…
I heard something… The candle. Why was I hearing the candle?
***
The anatomy teacher was short, skinny, and wore oversized glasses that crept in all directions across his cherubic face. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, always rocking back and forth as he spoke, and used words that would surprise even an English professor. He went into detail about the anatomy of the spine and how it was-
He was gesturing at me. The entire class was looking. I had gotten lost in the rapid-fire processing that I was coming to realize was constant… I was unprepared and flustered. My feet were still numb from the cross-legged posture as I rose.
Daggers dug into the soles of my feet as I took my position on the mat at the front of the room. Just then a set of clouds drifted across the face of the sun. I saw the face of the man in the window. There was a set to his eyes, a glimmer of tightness in the corner. I knew that look. I had seen it on my mother, ex-wife, and brother many times. It was bitter and cruel.
To his credit, he hid it well. I knew what was about to happen. Its the same as flying over the handlebars or soaring through an open window. You have a moment to think about the choices you made that led you to that moment. It is the split second where you are completely aware of how much the rest of your life, however short that might be, is going to hurt.
He had me bend from the hips. The intention was to show the class how to bend properly. After four days of constant yoga, this felt a little late, but that was irrelevant. He waited for the inevitable crook of my back. The point where my broken spine had no muscles or support. I bent. It was, naturally, improper posture. Then the pain shot through.
The man had taken my measure. We were learning Hatha Yoga, one of the definitions of which is: ‘stubborn.’ It was fitting. He knew that I wouldn’t back down and had neatly led me into a trap where I would experience the most pain, in front of the most people, forcing me to either grit my teeth or give up.
What he couldn’t have known was that I had done this before. Hundreds of times. Resilience is the keystone of my existence. I was built for this. Long ago, I had learned that it wasn’t enough to simply tolerate the pain. You have to smile while you are doing it. That is the one thing that absolutely no one can take from you.
Tiny Teacher continued his lecture, occasionally running his finger along various points of my straining body. I lost track of time. Pain shattered all ideas of cognizant thought. I could hear the murmurs from the rest of the class. I refused to move. Stubborn. Hatha. Waves of nausea rolled through my abdomen. Pressure built on the outside of my eyeballs, knees, and elbows. Thick, metallic beads of sweat came from my forehead. More mutters.
At some point he told me to relax. A hint of disappointment edged his voice. Lightning bolts of pain coursed through each bone of my spine. At first, I couldn’t move, as if rigor mortis had set in a few years too early… But as the vertebrae began to straighten, there was also a hint of… Was that relief?
I took my seat and the teacher kept talking. He pointedly avoided looking at me. Aftershocks of pain dominated my existence. The tunnel was narrow and deep. Time passed and others started to rise, signaling the end of the lesson. I looked down and saw that one of my hands was shaking. I looked up. The woman in front of me, still sitting, had turned and placed her hand over mine. Her eyes were searching, looking for signs of life.
I smiled.
***
The candle is talking to me.
The object of the practice is to stare so long that you start to cry. No blinking, no thinking. The idea is that if there are any other thoughts in your mind, the restlessness will cause your eyes to move. This provides wetness to your eyes and thus, you don’t have to blink. If you can quiet your mind and sharpen your focus toward the flame ahead…
I adjusted my legs on the thin mat beneath. I could see how everything had changed. My mind, once sharp and incisive, fluttered with imagined gusts. It had taken over out of necessity. There was always one more thing to do, another goal to accomplish. The mental framework was the only way out from the crushing reality I’d found myself in. If I had slipped, just for a moment, just for an inch, then I would have drowned. And now, when I could finally let go… I couldn’t.
So, there I sat. No blinking, no thinking. The candle blurred and faded, a faint breeze teasing the gentle flame. Slowly, so slowly, my heartbeat began to pound deep in the recesses. My breath patiently expanded, catching time and rhythm. I was simply a vessel. And for brief milliseconds, the veil dropped, the crushing weight of mind and matter dropped down into… something. And I was just… me. And from the intermediary phase, sounds appeared. Words. Phrases. Clutches of…
It’s a damn candle! How is it talking to me?
***
With a subtle domination, the program forced me to see how my coping strategies impact my life. We woke before dawn, fasted, worked our bodies into exhaustion, ate nothing but vegetables, and plumbed the depths of the psyche. After the first week, I could clearly see my maladaptive tendencies: People pleasing. False masks and positivity. Pushing people away. Internally fuming. Then, inevitably, complete withdrawal. Before long, I had become a foreign body, caught in the throat of a frantically coughing host.
I considered all of this one morning as I sat, cross-legged, on the same battered mat, a cup of coffee steaming in front of my bare and filthy feet. Tiny Teacher was pacing, pointedly avoiding my gaze. I knew what was coming. When he ushered me forward, I was ready. I had already been ostracized, my pain plastered across billboards to be judged and dissected by anyone who cared to look. There was nothing left to hide.
I’d practiced for this, rehearsing my reaction. I laughed along as I became the butt of the joke. I even added one of my own. When he had me hold the position that he knew would create the most pain, I gave him nothing. No cloud conveniently passed across the bright, smog-smudged sky. This time was shorter, with fewer beads of sweat. Racous applause followed me to me seat.
After class, I rolled out a mat and stripped down to my shorts. The sun slowly drifted across the gap between mountains. Swiftlets darted across the white stone tiles. A constant stream of horns and power tools rattled the air. A few moments later, a monkey appeared. It rested on the banister, eating a banana it had stolen somewhere. I stared at him, dunking a piece of coffee cake into my coffee. When he finished the banana, I tossed him a piece of pastry. He snatched it out of the air and popped it in his mouth. Then he smiled at me.
***
It’s not about the candle.
The voice was foreign yet familiar. I stared straight ahead. I had intentionally sat next to a beautiful woman. She was a born temptress with ankle tattoos and a thick French accent. I had lost it the first time she had said hello. Every time she spoke, I became lost in a fantasy of tucking the hair, forever loose by her right eye, behind her ear-
It’s not about the candle.
There is a misconception that runs rampant throughout the world. And that is that the only way to heal is to ‘leave it alone,’ blindly trudging forward and letting time heal the wounds. This is patently false. There is another way, one that we all know yet most fiercely refuse to face. And that is cauterization; the caustic, ‘burn it out’ way. And for better and worse, this was the way I’d always done it.
All of the physical postures of yoga had brought years worth of stored trauma to the forefront. According to this philosophy, it’s all stored in the hips and lower back. I found myself reliving all of The Stages. Grief. Hopelessness. Bitterness. Despair. Rage. My thoughts were spattered with all of the dreams that I’d had to let go of; all of the innocence I could never take back. I was front and center of my own dramatic arthouse masterpiece, played out on a foreign landscape, surrounded by people I barely knew… The voice came again.
Focus.
Right. I dropped into my breath. My skin prickled, rippling with hollow divots and standing hairs. Each vein became a conduit towards the center. With an immutable pulse, the heart of the room breathed me. And with a trenchant hesitancy I saw… nothing. Everything was illuminated. God itself had grinned and opened the gate… And I saw all and none of it at the same time.
It wasn’t about the candle at all. It was the simple act of staring at it that gave it meaning. My mind drifted into the background. And who I really was finally took a long-awaited breath. It was the flash of darkness a split-second before the dawn; the breath before someone speaks. I let go of the attachment to myself, of how I defined objects. I gave up ideas of right and wrong, time, and substance. I wasn’t just flowing with the river anymore. I was the river. Somehow, the candle was also the river. And I was the damn candle.
Now you’re getting it.
***
The whole thing had gone sour. Boundaries had done nothing to stop the toxicity of several older students from flowing through the halls. And shit always rolls downhill. I had gone the extra mile to create a safe place in which I could be reborn. What I had really created were the exact same conditions that I had just escaped from. It was a loop. And all I could do was sit in the middle of the storm as it raged around me, trying to figure out how to miss the next one.
I took it all out on the mat, attacking each pose with furious intent and complete disregard for fatigue. Twenty-five sweat-soaked students stared back with each exhalation. Bodies moved and flowed, all narrowly contained by small rectangles of neoprene. The only escape was inward. I rushed headlong into the churning, roiling magma. Everything burned. My entire being screamed in an imagined silence.
None of them could possibly understand what this meant to me. They had tried to bury me. I had been left, battered and bleeding out, on the trash heap. And they had laughed. I’d taken the pennies and shards from that pile and carried on. I wasn’t just there for a silly certificate. I was there to fucking transcend.
I looked at it all as a gift. Every backbend and awkward pose dragged the ancient wounds from the depths of my physical body. Triggers came fast and heavy. I found myself drifting back to high school and college, where the egos were loud and the alcohol was louder. I was being given the chance to slice deep into the onion and discard the unneeded layers. The tears and solitude were just part of the process.
“Hold!”
I gripped the mat. Sweat poured from my forehead, glistening as it splattered below my face. Everything snapped, burned, and quavered. I squared my shoulders and trudged deeper into the depths. There was only one way out of this place.
Through.
***
The candle wasn’t real anymore. Instead of a physical entity, it was imprinted on the center of my forehead. I had declined the golden paint the teacher applied to the other’s foreheads. I knew what it looked like to refuse. But my attention was already permanently glued between my eyes. I didn’t need anything to remind me how much it hurt.
The lights went out and I receded from this plane. The flame flickered and danced, warmth pulsing down my esophagus and deep into my bowels. I was supposed to be focusing on my nose. Breathing in and out. I had that down though. Now I was just trying to get rid of that damn candle.
You’re almost there.
The words rippled through the bubbling wax. Smoke jumped upward and curled into the void. I knew that voice. It was me. Another me. An older me.
I wanted to stand up and scream, tear every follicle of hair from my head in one solid rip, and bathe in the viscous certainty that I would either win this final battle or die trying. Naturally, of course, I did nothing but sit there and ‘stare’ at the damn candle. This time though, I said something back.
Show me how.
***
Snot oozed down my face in thick sheets. The night before had been spent tossing and turning, a fever roasting my veins as if I was caught in an oven left unattended. Dawn arrived through the pillbox window of the bathroom, it’s light tentatively peeking through. I kneeled, oppressively weighted, amidst an ice-cold flurry of water pouring from a spigot set high in the wall.
Get up.
I missed the first two classes of the day getting to the doctor and back, the bitter wind sapping what little strength I had left. I used the remainder to climb the stairs to get to Philosophy class. No one looked in my direction as I set up my mat and took my place.
The greatest teachers can talk to multiple people at once, using the same words for different meanings, their lessons custom-tailored to their audience. I knew that this man had me in mind when he taught. I don’t think any of the other students really cared what he had to say. They were here to learn how to do the various poses and then get back out to the cafes. For me, though, it was the yoga philosophy that made me sit up straight. And the nervous, yet brutally hard man in front of me was the foremost scholar on the subject that I had ever met.
He touched lightly on the Bhagavad Gita and the various form of karma. Words in Sanskrit and Hindi tumbled together in a convoluted mess. But then he sprinkled in a story about a young man who ran off to teach something his master had taught him, without considering the consequences. The man had ended up in the hospital, disillusioned. I straightened my spine.
He listened to my meditations…
The teacher went on, espousing the various forms of karma and how they interacted with the physical asanas. It became clear that he was adapting the lesson plan to perhaps the only yogi in attendance who didn’t give a single shit about the actual poses themselves. Then he told another story, about a man with a lot of experience, who had journeyed far and accumulated vast amounts of knowledge. The knowledge had driven the man mad and he had eventually killed himself.
Read my blog too…
I stared, dumbly. He was pointedly not looking at me, instead gazing into the disinterested faces. Someone raised their hand and asked a question he had answered on the first day of class, weeks before. He did his best to not sound exasperated. I knew then that he was talking to me; teaching me without mentoring; guiding me toward the correct path… This was my answer. This was my guide. The one that I have been seeking for longer than I could remember.
Suddenly he turned his head and looked me right in the eyes. There was no doubt about it now. He was completely ignoring the question he had just been asked.
“In order to teach, you must become the master.”
I looked down and tried to catch the snot dribbling from my nostrils. Heat pulsed from my forehead and chest. The fever had returned. I dabbed my face with a napkin and looked up. His eyes were still boring into my head.
“I have nothing left to give.” I whispered. The words tore out, thoughtless and inevitable, like a light drizzle deep in the forest. I felt the uncomfortable stir of the other students behind me. I didn’t care. This was what I had come all of this way for.
“That is enough.” He replied. His eyes bored for a moment longer, then he nodded, slowly, and returned to the lesson.
***
The sun crept above the rising brick and concrete buildings surrounding our own. A warm, milky haze drifted through the narrow streets as workers ascended the bamboo scaffolding of the adjacent buildings. Horses and cows beckoned and grunted, jostling for position on the exposed dirt below. I was laid back, prone on my mat. We were supposed to be helping others in various positions, alignment or something like that. It didn’t matter. The certificates had been printed. It was over. I had made it.
I laid back on my mat and listened to the other students talk and giggle. Snatches of German, French, and Hindi swirled across the room, a gumbo of language and inanity. You could feel the relief, the release of tension and worry. I felt the small hands of my inner child slowly releasing on my arms, legs, and heart; felt myself surrendering to the future and the things I couldn’t control. The teacher passed, smiling. We both knew I didn’t care anymore.
“I take it back.” I said. “You’re a nice man.” He laughed at that and moved down the line.
The lesson that day was learning how to give a massage, of sorts. It was savasana, but enhanced. He had explained how to rock the hands, legs, and neck of a prone person to better allow them to release.
I had spent three weeks as the awkward pairing, the last one chosen in line. I had relived countless childhood memories of rejection and alienation, played out with people half my age. As he clapped his hands and told the class to pair up, I looked around, laughed, then laid down on my mat and closed my eyes. No one had to pretend anymore.
I must have dozed off because I came to with someone gently rocking my legs. I opened my eyes and there was a smiling face, broad and brown. It was a young man that had approached me for some advice weeks before. We had bonded over mutual experience. I liked the kid. He reminded me of myself, a long time ago.
“Rest, Samji.” He murmured. “Rest.”
More hands joined. Someone lifted an arm, another my neck. Parts of my body rocked back and forth. I could feel the deep strains in my hamstrings, quads, and lower back. My ankles, knees, and elbows all ached with tendinitus. Several bones in my left foot were clearly broken. And my back…
Unintelligible murmurs followed every crack of my bones, every catch of muscle. I felt the mat beneath me accepting my weight. My breath slowed as warmth trickled through my nervous system. A series of plugs decoupled themselves. I laid back, prone and childlike, and let me self be rocked to sleep.
It was finally over. I had made it. A smile touched my lips.
That is enough.
I rested.
