Will & Guidance

This last month I had a flare up of endometriosis, an old, familiar acquaintance that I had not encountered in quite some time. In discomfort and exhausted for a few weeks, I was reminded how much I struggle with accessing my guidance when I’m not feeling well. In part it’s because my body, my main receptor for the sensations I’ve learned to equate with guidance, is so distracted from discomfort that it becomes harder to discern the more subtle voice of guidance. But it’s also because, in a way, I really don’t want to know what my guidance has to say about why I’m not feeling well or what to do about it.

As far as I can tell this is for two reasons, made apparent by two tendencies: 1.) I try to ignore that I’m not feeling well and hope it will go away as I keep going about business as usual (hard to admit based on what I teach day in and day out, but true!), or 2.) Once I start feeling really bad (no doubt because I haven’t rested enough!) I go to the opposite end of the spectrum and begin to suspect that I’m feeling so badly because I must be sick with cancer, or something equally horrible.
Neither are useful, and both are based in fear; I’m scared that if I have to take off from work I won’t be able to pay my bills, all the way to I’m scared that if I get really sick my life will drastically change and I won’t be able to do my work or my partner will freak out and our relationship will end and, and and…the fears kinda’ snowball like that.

But the truth is, my fear that I could get sick and not get better could happen, as I was reminded this last week when a young and vital acquaintance died and a family member became suddenly and drastically ill.  I was reminded that I can have the best of intentions, I can eat healthy and do yoga and do all the “right” things–and still get sick. In other words, my will can only get me so far. After that, it just makes me so exhausted from pushing against what is, that I collapse.

And I’m not just talking about willfulness around health, like I experienced in the last few weeks. We all are walking around with a burden—whether physical, emotional, mental or spiritual—that is oppressive and that we fear might never go away. We’ve used our will to be able to make it through the days and weeks and years and still function, but that doesn’t make whatever “it” is go away. It just makes us more tired.

I don’t mean to suggest that willfulness is wrong or bad. It is good to develop your will so as to learn how to stand up for yourself, to learn your own preferences to someone else’s, and to cultivate inner strength and courage in yourself. Lacking any self-will leads to a type of collapse, too. But the thing is, our culture puts a premium on beefing up your will. Even in yoga, all the exercises I can find that have to do with the third chakra, or solar plexus–the place in the body that is understood to be the energetic center of will–have to do with expanding it. There’s hardly any talk in our culture, and in yoga these days, about how to soften one’s will, what it feels like and why it’s useful.

However, two weekends ago I received a profound teaching on this from my friend and incredibly skilled and artful yoga teacher, Ada Lusardi. She taught a workshop on releasing the psoas, a deep muscle that runs from the 12th rib on the back of the body, through the abdomen and pelvis and down to connect at the top of the inside of the thigh. This muscle, when tight, causes all sorts of mischief for the lower back and hips, as well as the respiratory, reproductive, and digestive systems in the body. It’s main function, other than aiding with hip flexing (lifting the thigh toward the torso), is stabilization and support.

So what does all of this have to do with will?

The psoas is deep and big. And when it’s gripping or tight, like it is on most of us because of a sedentary lifestyle, it presents itself in our frame in one of two ways: when we’re standing straight in tadasana, either our chest puffs out and our butt sticks out, or the opposite—our chest is sunken in and our tail rounded under. These are pretty familiar holding patterns. You can probably recognize which camp you’re in. I’m definitely in the first camp.

What I recognized as we were exploring this in the workshop is that it’s the solar plexus, the third chakra—the center of will—that either puffs up or sinks back. The first way of standing is kind of what it feels like to “stand up” to something, to stick our chest out and be defended. The second way is what it feels like to shy away and hide. Another two familiar emotional patterns that you can probably relate to. Not surprisingly, I relate to the first one better; my unconscious pattern is to puff up and defend.

Here’s the brilliant thing: when Ada had us stand in our habitual way of standing (puffed up or sunken in) and came around and pressed on our shoulders, it was all we could do to not collapse onto the ground. The thing is, when we stand that way, we’re putting all of our weight on the soft tissue, rather than on the bones that are designed to hold the weight. And any extra gravity—scientific or emotional—is enough to take us out.

The psoas, when it’s not gripping, allows us to rest our weight onto the bones of the spine so that the skeleton takes the weight of our body, like it’s designed to. Once we had released our psoas muscles through a series of subtle movements—all of which in some way revolved around softening the solar plexus—and Ada had us come back to standing in tadasana and pushed down hard on our shoulders—we didn’t budge. Not even a smidge. It was mind-blowing.

So here’s what I’m getting at for the other folks with me in the camp of puffer-outers and defenders (which I see as the more populated camp in my classes): we can’t rest our weight onto the psoas muscle and spine that are designed to support us without softening the solar plexus. Or, using the body as a metaphor for our spirit, we can’t rest into the very center of ourselves, the place of our deepest knowing, our divine will, our guidance, without softening our will. And if we don’t learn to soften our will, any extra emotional gravity or weight placed on our shoulders will take us down.  Our will alone can’t support us. There is something much deeper and stronger that is there to support us, but it takes softening the defenses.

Though I will admit that it felt a little vulnerable to have stood in tadasana with my solar plexus soft and undefended and my weight on my built-in support system, it was also the easiest and lightest and strongest stance I have ever experienced.
I can’t think of a more perfect, visceral and powerful remembrance for what it feels like to soften my own will and turn to the support of my inner guidance. My inner guidance that is always kind, always loving and steady like a rock, even if it feels vulnerable to stand in it.

Thanks, Ada, for gifting me with this teaching. You’ll be missed when you return to the bay area!

P.S.  If you want to feel your own solid tadasana, come to class as we’re playing with this idea. Or if you want to rest into the support of your own inner guidance more reliably, contact me for a private session.

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