I’ve hurt my wrist a little, a niggle more than an injury I decide (after the usual several days of panic when the sensations were most intense with all the old fearful voices telling me it’ll never be right again. Ever!)
Phew, panic over and I begin to think more clearly what caused it. Something in my new programme in the gym. I talked it over with my PT, we couldn’t agree on what was most likely. So once the wrist feels tolerable I front up and get back to the work.
Penultimate exercise is ‘skull crushers’, now made more tricky by introducing a variation with the shoulder in greater flexion so that the bar is lowered overhead, not so much skull crushing risk! Ouch, this is it, I can feel my wrist complaining! I try to follow the instruction of keeping elbows in, thinking of pinca mayurasana. And it hurts. I lessen the inward pull on the elbows and loosen my grip on the bar (taking the so-called suicide grip, where the barbell is balanced between thumb and first fingers without forming a tight fist) — and the pain lessens.
My PT chuckles when I report my exploration on the bench and tells me I’m ‘too yogic’ in my efforts to apply alignment to weightlifting. It’s not ‘elbows in’, it’s just ‘check the elbows don’t flare out too much’. Well I know I’m not nearly ‘yogic’ enough as I think on the virtue of aparigraha (not clinging, non-covetousness) and the strong efforts I always make to contain things, exert control, and habitually operate from a place of distrust. The world has taught me this, even as now I try to learn the opposite, to notice all the times when I could hold things more lightly, keep trust, and allow. The ‘suicide grip’ on life. Indeed that’s how it feels for me sometimes, such is the risk-taking I feel when I loosen my grip.
And even as I muse on my graspingness, I receive a difficult email which throws me into a free fall of emotions. It arrives with an innocuous ping and suddenly my world shifts. My best interests have been decided by someone else. No consultation or conversation, not much explanation even. The words sit in black and white on my computer screen. I read and re-read, desperate to feel some flesh and bones warmth and compassion behind the typeface. It is a fork in the road that I am unwilling to approach. Now my direction has been firmly decided for me and I’m not sure I agree. Do I fight according to my habit and grip tightly to my own ideas or do I set off in this unknown direction full of openness and trust?
I sit in the darkness of my thoughts, meditation and rumination.
“It’s dark because you are trying too hard.
Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly.
Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.
Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.
…
So throw away your baggage and go forward.
There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet,
trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair.
That’s why you must walk so lightly.
Lightly my darling,
on tiptoes and no luggage,
not even a sponge bag,
completely unencumbered.”
― Aldous Huxley , Island
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