Day 605 – Happy (Breath and Bone)

Y’all. I’m happy. I don’t know how long it will last, but I would like to document that it is possible. I have found a way.

I went to Kundalini yoga today. Got up before 2a so I could catch two buses far across town and walk 30 min to get to a 4a Kundalini yoga sadhana practice.

After class, my teacher offered to give me a ride home. I asked him to drop me at the nearby Starbucks instead, which is where I am now. Happy.

Because I did Jupiter kriya. A kriya is a set of postures, movements, sometimes chanting (called mantra), and breathing and meditation techniques in kundalini yoga. Jupiter kriya is a particular meditation and exercise wherein you hold your hands in particular positions for 31 minutes minimum. It is hard to do. I had done it a few times before, several years ago, and today, I did it again. Going in, I knew it would be hard. I also knew that at the times I had done it before, I had to build my way into it. I wasn’t able to hold the position for 31 minutes on the first try. But today, I decided I would do it. I just decided that I would.

And I did it! It was hard. But throughout the posture, words like power and strength came to mind, and I examined my relationship with those words. My willingness to hold power. My willingness to be strong. I had had resistance to those words and associations with those concepts for quite some time. Like, I thought being powerful and strong always meant I wouldn’t get any help, and so I got tired of being powerful and strong. But weak and powerless never really worked for me, either. So today I renegotiated. I surrendered. I am powerful. It just is what it is. I am a warrior woman. I knew that going in. I thought of the movie Avatar 3, which I had watched recently. The strong mother. The earth daughter. The baby girl. What does it look like to be strong and feminine and supported and soft at the same time? They had represented those things. And so I leaned in to their avatars and decided I would be strong and frisky. It would be a good thing to prove that, yes, I could do this 31 minute posture easily. Yes, I could feel the jitters and shakes in my body and keep going. Yes, I could feel the pain and grief and anger held in my right biceps and my right thigh and I could engage with it and massage it with my intention until it decided to give in… Somewhere in the kriya, I decided that I would reframe my distorted, trauma based beliefs about being powerful and strong. From now on, being powerful and strong means that I will get all the help I need, when I am weak and also when I am strong and be celebrated, victorious and fulfilled as I demonstrate my power…

A man sits in the coffee shop next to me. Homeless looking. Picking up empty cups to see if there are leftover drinks in it.

At yoga today, we also read from their mantra book and somewhere in there, it spoke about saints being protected. Oh! The kriya we did today was about balancing the life force energy and the energy that releases. They have names, but I forget what they are called. The kriya helped me balance so much tingly energy that I had been feeling in my body these past days.

I’d love to tell you all that’s going on with me, but not really. Can you believe that for once I actually want to shut my mouth about myself??? The reading today also spoke about only having beings of love in your inner circle. Just yesterday, I had written a message to my mom wherein I told her that I will only ever allow people who offer Love and goodwill to me into my inner circle…

At the end of class, the teacher played some corny song about how to live righteous. Daughters of the light were supposed to be strong and fight, especially when they are met with despair and desperation, the song said. With breath and bone. It was beautiful.

I have been saved, y’all. I know it like I knew I was gonna finish that Jupiter kriya. I ain’t gonna write too much today. Thank you for being on this journey with me. I Love you. Bless you.

Ameen.

Day 605 – Happy (Breath and Bone)