Feeling In & Expressing Out
In yoga, my body learns to speak a language it has always known but sometimes feels forgotten. From the beginning pose to the last, it’s like a run-on sentence. Breathes measured and flowing connected together. Just passing through the poses while riding a grander wave. An ancient grammar of bone and sinew and spirit.
When I reach skyward, my fingers spread like words seeking their meaning in the air. This is how I spell release: palms open to the ceiling, as if letting go of everything I've been clutching—fears, doubts, yesterday's heaviness. My hands empty themselves into the light. I visualize these strains leaving my body through my extremities - giving up and away.
The ground beneath me is not just floor or mat but foundation, storyteller, strength-giver. I press my feet, my palms, my knees into its surface, and it answers back with solidity, with presence. This is how roots feel, I think, drinking deep from the earth's own courage. The deepest, wettest, darkest place. A place that lives within each of us, too. Each point of contact becomes a commitment—to this moment, to this body, to this practice of being fully here.
My heart, a tender compass, seeks its own true north in each pose. Sometimes it yearns upward, straining toward something just beyond naming. Sometimes it draws down, heavy with knowing, seeking support, and wanting to kiss the earth. Sometimes it simply rests, perfectly centered in its cage of bone, teaching me what balance feels like from the inside out.
This is how I learn to move emotional weight: not by pushing or forcing, but by closing my eyes and letting my body show me the way energy wants to flow. Each stretch becomes a channel, each twist a wringing out of what no longer serves. The "sludge" I carry—grief, tension, unspoken words—finds its way to the surface, then beyond.
And then there are the moments when joy takes over, when my practice becomes pure play. I dance across my mat like a child discovering movement for the first time—one breath, one beat, one beautiful risk after another. My body writes poems in the air: twist, release, catch, counter. I prance from edge to edge, each landing a surprise, each turn a discovery. Here, balance becomes a game, not a goal. I toss myself into motion and catch myself in stillness, over and over, my mat a stage for this improvised dance of breath and bone. The rhythm is infectious, generative—each movement birthing the next, like jazz played by muscle and sinew instead of brass and strings.
I am learning that this body knows how to heal itself, if only I give it space to speak. Each practice becomes a conversation between what I've been holding and what I'm ready to release. Between earth and sky. Between strength and surrender. Between who I've been and who I'm becoming.
This is the real practice: not perfecting poses, but perfecting presence. Letting each movement become both question and answer, both prayer and revelation. This is how we unblock our channels—not by force, but by faith in the body's own wisdom. By trusting that when we open, release follows as naturally as breath.
