“Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body.” This line came into my head the other day. I don’t recall the first time I read it, but it is a line from a short story called “The Painful Case,” in James Joyce’s Dubliners.
It’s staggering how many people don’t inhabit their bodies. Even seasoned yogis show up to their mat and settle into themselves with a big sigh as if to suggest they’ve been out for a long morning of running errands and are just now arriving back at home.
The thing about really living in our bodies is that it requires us to feel, and as we all know, opening ourselves to feeling in general puts us at risk of feeling things we’d rather not feel. And so, most people lock the door to their body and go back to incessantly running mental errands.
Yet what is so inspiring to me is how students show up at yoga class, whether consciously or not, with the longing to come back home to themselves. It happens slowly at first, tentatively, and usually only during the poses that feeeel reaaally gooooood. There is a deep breath or a sigh that indicates they are really there and feeling it feel good. And that’s great. That’s the place to start — the place of support and softness.
And then gradually a student will choose to stay with a challenging pose without going back into their head and hardening physically (as those two things always happen together). Instead, they’ll stay in their body. They’ll remember what it felt like to soften and be present, and they’ll apply it here even though it’s hard, and they’ll feel. And once they feel the hard place, they have the opportunity to respond by softening and the whole situation transforms.
Lately, as I’m coming up against my own edge in this place of learning how to stay in my body, feel and be soft even when it’s hard and uncomfortable and even when I’m around other people (especially the people around whom I feel most vulnerable), I am touched by how truly revolutionary it is for a classroom full of people to transform into a community of people at home in themselves.
That’s what the Mr. Duffy’s of the world don’t ever get; in addition to saying that he “lived a short distance from his body,” in the short story Joyce also describes Mr. Duffy as meticulous, ordered, and-not surprisingly–as isolated. I believe we come to class not only because we want to feel at home in ourselves, but also because we long to be in communion with others (as those two things always happen together, too). And God knows that communion is not terribly ordered!
So this is at once my letter of gratitude to you for coming to class and for doing the courageous work of arriving in your life, inhabited and open. This is also my invitation to you to come back home to yourself if you’ve been living elsewhere for awhile. I don’t just mean by coming to a class, but come back to your body right now where you are. And now. And now.
Finally, this is my challenge to you: The next time you come to the community of class, really let yourself feel the extraordinariness of being in your center, soft, and open among a group of people. Feel it so that you can know yourself well in this place of openness and softness so that you can access this off your mat among the people in your life. Feel it because the world needs fewer “painful cases” like Mr. Duffy, and more courageous yogis like you.
