Day 4: Never Is Never Never

They all kinda blend/blur together the way orange moves gradually into red which moves gradually into facia which moves gradually into tendon, and to bone.. As everything connects inward and outward in a net work of.. Geometric and. One geometric designs.. Extending out of the body and into the either and casuals body and beyond.. And and.. My mind is bending and stretching, expanding in wonder and contracting in doubt... As is my aging body.. I can envision fibroblasts moving around depositing collagen an halauranic acid like those little round vacuum cleaners robotically moving around ones living room.
Oh and then there is the practice ... So this morning started the same , in the dark and cold. We sit quietly, we chant the morning mantra.. 12 times... And that ritual sets the stage for the Yin Practiice.

Today Bernie tells beautiful stories of the myths and tales surrounding the Buddha and his life. We hold and hold, stressing some targeted joint, ligament, tendon... And are taken on this colorful journey which is fascinating. I almost forget
how uncomfortable I am. We do simple poses and hold them much much longer than I am used to. We do straddle, one legged straddle, and The two hours passes so quickly. We then take a posture apart and learn how to help the different student who have various skeletal differences. The day before we played with bones and watched the slides on Paul Grilley' s website of many leg and pelvis and arm bones. It was deeply emphasized and drilled into my hard head, each person is different, there is no one way to do any pose in Yin or any other form, and the extremities (legs feet, arms hands) are the least important for placement... Shit. Really? Like the knee doesn't have to alighted over the ankle? Oh ! Yea .. My anger is rising.

Ok break for breakfast, two hours to recover and eat.. We return to an afternoon of energy discussions, quantum physics talk, but lightly and irreverently, and to discussion the links, lines and matrices which connect the east and west, and many of the eastern modalities. We discuss chakra theory, QI, Chi, Jing, spirit... Bernie tells a good story. It was fun and rich with information.. Big lesson so far. Never never means never, and always is alway wrong... No dogma, everything is in flux, one day this workshop will be proved to be hogwash perhaps.. Open open open, play explore, enlighten up!

On this same day we define adduction, abduction, flex ion extension, rotation and all the ways the joints and body moves... What stops movement and how to discern if some has come to their limit.. Bone against bone. This idea that if we eat right, practice daily, push and make our yoga intense and regular , see our Ayurvedic doctors and meditate, that one day we will have a perfect Hanuman asana, a perfect hand stand, a perfect practice... Ha ha ha ha ha .. NOT. Biology and genetics cannot be argued with.

Whew.. Good night.