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Down dog

Writer's picture: CroneCrone

At the top of the Maidwell Hill, I did slow motion yoga.


I reached up, feeling the stretch and the opening. Folded down and let my chest sink to my thighs. My hands planted firmly on the solid face of the earth as I looked up then stepped back and sank into the chaturanga, the yoga press up, feeling the strain in my arms and the force in my wrists and the suddenly painful mounds of dried earth left by excavating worms pressing into the palms of my hands. My chest and head rises into up-dog as my neck lengthens and I feel the relief of being forced away from my steering-wheel or keyboard posture. On the exhale, into down dog and I look through my legs at the world above me and the deep blue vault of the sky below. The dog is up, walking on the ceiling, with his new fly-super-power and the birds singing in the azure depths.


I breathe.


I feel the atmosphere supporting me, holding me in place on this spinning ball of troubled life. I feel the sun's distant warmth and the earth's present promise. You're home, she says, you're home.


I repeat the sequence yet more slowly. Noticing how my hands pass through the breathing air. Noticing how my chest rises and my head rises, but my shoulders drop back as I reach for the skies and say to myself, 'Father Sky!' Noticing, when I sink forward, the relaxation and at the same time the strain in hamstrings and calves, but the relaxation of heart and stomach and the roiling busy nervousness within me recedes and rests and waits and lets me be. Noticing the ants active below me.


When I move into warrior poses, I feel the muscles in my stomach and sides, how they feel as though for too long they have been contracted by my sitting. I feel the surprise of flesh asked to extend. I feel the slight resentment and then the release, the relief.


I feel my diaphragm sink and my ribs open and my lungs expand as the air of the wide world rushes in.


And down dog. The rest pose. Five breaths. Controlled. Even. Watching the earth curve away above me and the sky open out below.


I

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