Graceful Warrior

I am not graceful. I am nearly always the opposite. Clumsy, rushed, awkward, fumbling. It has been that way since I can remember, spending full nights into day-breaks pleading to reside inside the husk of someone else, begging for a body that knows how to move without being noticed. Or questioned. Or mocked. But here I stay, trapped inside this one, just slightly out of tune, enough to blend and enough to bleed, watching the others glide effortlessly by.

But there is a flow in yoga, a series of poses building one upon the other, where I lift my bumbling body from the mat, front leg bent, back leg extended and I rise, arms outstretched, legs trembling, balance off kilter, little to the left, bend to the right, adjust, breathe. Stretch my arms to the ceiling and wait for the call, “warrior two.” And there I am in all my gracefulness and strength. I find my center, my light. I lower my arms and reach them to the front and back, future and past. I stand in the middle of it all, finally still, finally. And I feel whole for a moment. Pieced together perfectly, exactly as I am, a graceful warrior.

Then the next call to “reverse.” I reach forward and then lean back into myself, rely on my body to do what it knows to do, rest my back arm on my back leg, shoot my other to the sky, wiggling fingers to grasp the furthest droplets of air. The stretch runs the length of my body and the dam breaks. The tension I carry from morning to night and back into bed runs from the tip of my outstretched finger to the bottom of my feet, disappearing into the thin mat beneath me.

My feet are grounded down into earth, and I am no longer bothered by the callouses, gangling toes gripping the floor like talons. These feet can hold me up, the basic function of feet. What else do they need to do, really? I sigh, erase from my mind the pedicured toes gracing the neighboring mat, the ones that I am certain dance, almost float, across a room. The woman’s bare stomach, perfect posture, fluid movements, boasting loudly only moments before have quieted now, and I can hear the collective inhale of those around me. I breathe with them and feel connected to myself again. There I am. Thank God. There I am. I’m still here. The world has not swallowed me yet.

We meet again in a forward fold, reaching hands to feet, feet that I love again. We bend in half, bowing in reverence. Then we lift, hinge at the hips, back straight and stretch, then return to a bow and the relief it brings. When do we grant ourselves the gift of reverence? I bow to my body and all it can do, will do, has done, a body that has carried me, however gracelessly, to the place I am now. I welcome this gratitude so fully in the silence of the room.

Again, the call comes to “rise” and we are beckoned to meet the sun. “We do not have to be the same sunflower” our instructor says, and suddenly, I believe her. I think of the woman standing next to me, the one who steals my attention, my love for myself. I think of her tan toes with gray paint, her assuredness assaulting when I dared to sit so close. I shut my eyes and think of the sunflower I have become, windblown and beautiful, bold and open, askew but standing.

I find grace on this mat in these small movements, the cyclical stances of a warrior, the instructor’s mantra circling through each motion. “We do not have to be the same sunflower.” We do not have to be the same.

I grow a little closer to this broken body of mine. Today, on this mat, on this morning, I choose praise and turn my face to catch the rain and rays of sun, away from the field stretching toward the horizon – millions of sunflowers, competing for the light. But the light is never-ending. There is enough for this entire field and every other, fields upon fields, filling the earth. There is light enough for everyone if we tilt our heads and look up.

– Ashley, Woman of a Certain Grace