A Year In Sedona: Yoga At The Edge

                      

Chapter 9
Yoga At The Edge

Yoga allows you to rediscover a sense of wholeness in your life,
 where you do not feel like you are constantly trying to fit broken pieces together.-- BKS Iyengar
           

            Yoga classes were abundant in Sedona when we arrived but the only authentic Iyengar-style yoga teacher in town had recently departed for greener pastures, lamenting a meager market unsupportive of another full time studio. I was familiar with the Iyengar method and wanted to stick with it so I created a home studio to do chair yoga with Louis and Izzy the cat as my first sign-ups. We were all over sixty, each with a little something to work on and we were a convivial, if unorthodox little group. Stripping the living room of rugs and bulky furniture I set out folding chairs, colorful mats, thick blankets and sturdy blocks. Soon Yoga At the Edge was born.

        Once a week the three of us met for class on Saturday mornings. Louis liked the stretching and convenience of doing yoga in a chair and offered to share a Dharma Moment, thoughts about how to use what we experienced in yoga class to heal ourselves and live more in the present moment. Izzy, who had some lingering issues from a few ill considered tussles in his tomcat years, showed up at class mostly for moral support and for his favorite posture svasana, the relaxing-on-a-blanket pose. I wanted to stay in shape for hiking and knew how much yoga could contribute to overall healthy aging. And I liked teaching again.

            I'd become a yoga teacher some years back, looking for a way to fix a frozen shoulder, still painful even after physical therapy. Iyengar is a precise style, safe and effective for addressing health issues, particularly those involving flexibility, strength and balance. A six month yoga training fixed the shoulder and I felt stronger and healthier than I'd been at eighteen. My focus from then on was yoga for healthy aging and I was gratified to see that by my simply by holding a space offered in good faith, healing on many levels was available. When I resumed teaching in Sedona, our little three person class went so well that we invited four friends to participate, gratis of course. Once a week we were honored when they showed up on Saturday mornings, their participation in the yoga class a highlight of the whole week.

 

         The six of us (Izzy had dropped out by then) all had a little something that was in one stage or another of healing --  maybe a hip or knee replacement, stiff back, sore muscles, a little arthritis here and there, continuing care for a long ago organ transplant, surgery recovery, chronic degenerative issues -- pretty much the usual health maintenance issues for our age group. Good sports all, our new yoga buddies didn't really need a lot of convincing about the value of working on balance, developing overall flexibility and strengthening key muscle groups. They appreciated the mild exercise and spiritual uplift that came from the asanas, breathing practice, sitting meditation, chants, healing visualization and the Dharma Moment Louis offered.

           This group of adventurous souls had a willingness to trust the process and they were comfortable enough with their own body to offer suggestions and comments along the way. We just let the muse lead us, doing whatever everyone needed to do that week. Sometimes we shared our healing stories in conversation and talked about how a simple yoga posture, a meditative moment or even just a salute to the cosmos with a simple Om had the power to make a difference in the tenor of the whole week. At year's end we'd branched out into more creative space, adding a class on the connections between yoga, writing and creativity. We all read aloud our written pieces about meeting the muse and how it allowed us to find healing of mind, body and spirit. We agreed that although everyone at times despairs over the more intractable aspects of staving off the effects of advancing years, the prospect of change had been made infinitely easier knowing we had each other to laugh with and learn from as we made our healing journeys to wisdom's edge.

                                 Meeting Your Muse: Yoga And Writing At The Edge          

                  Writing the healing narrative is an honorable and worthy endeavor with the potential to mend a body, soothe a soul, liberate a mind. An ancient and powerful narrative, the Wounded Healer archetype is the story of making a life whole again through encounter, recall and subsequent release of a wound. Every healing narrative draws on this archetype about leaving the old to arrive at the new and I can't help but wonder if such stories of sustaining a debilitating wound and finding redemption, recovery or renewal are the very stories that need to be told and heard now.  
 
             Writing such a story gives perspective and closure in dramatic fashion. As our lives unfold we  encounter all the elements that characterize every good story: place, time, character, plot, comedy, tragedy, conflict, counterbalance and conclusion. To bring these pieces together in an attempt to heal, to become whole is to know you survived, even thrived and what's more, lived to tell the tale of becoming strong at the broken places.

We make our way on the journey to establish and maintain health as best we can. Many are wounded, many falter, only to rise again like the Phoenix, called then to share the gift of healing.  Arthur Frank in The Wounded Storyteller describes three kinds of healing narrative.  
 In the Quest narrative the writer relates how the sense of the world changed and how you make meaning of a life that has been utterly transformed after experiencing illness, accident, disease or other wounding. 
     The Restorative approach by contrast, invites the writer to describe how continuing to live with an illness or wound has resulted in a new and different life, even as the original wounding remains alive. 
     Alternatively, the Chaos narrative allows the writer to simply splash the page with thoughts, feelings, moments of brokenness and fragments of remembrance as the non-linear and non-rational find voice in process rather than product.
 
      Using either the Quest (the transformation narrative), Restorative (the maintenance narrative) or Chaos (stream of consciousness thoughts and feelings) form, tell a short story about becoming strong at the broken places. Choose a moment or period in your life in which you experienced a wound, whether it's a childhood illness, an auto accident, a chronic health issue, the sudden onset of disease, a bout of spiritual malaise. Use this as a focus to write a short six part prose open piece in which each part begins with these words:

I remember this so well because it was when….

I remember this so well because it was what…

I remember this so well because it was where…

I remember this so well because it was how…

I remember this so well because it was why…

            I remember this so well because now when I think about it…

               Finally, share your healing narrative with someone, a silent listener bearing witness to your arrival at wisdom's edge.