I'm not interested if you can move quickly from one pose to the next
forcing efforting pushing
yourself
on automatic pilot.

I'm not interested in your fancy footing
parading
grandstanding
circus posing
with the crowd
at your feet
looking up to you.

I'm interested if you can move into the pose
with your breath as your guide
as your guru.
Expanding, contracting
with your precious inhales and
EX-halations.
Moving you deeper,
or steadying you exactly where you are.

I'm interested if you can move
from one pose to the next with
with the caress of your breath
moving in you
sweetly.
Allowing the waves of inhales and exhales
to move you
with gravity on your side.

I'm interested if you can sit in a pose
that you don't very much like
and if you can breathe into the uncomfortableness
with your insides squirming,
your mind screaming
the furthest away from peace
the furthest way from bliss
that your mind tells you
you are.

I'm interested if you can sit in the darkness,
sit in the swirl of your chaotic mind,
in the internal tornado
disturbing you to the core.

I'm interested if you can be so fully present
with yourself,
if you can be uncomfortably comfortable
in this pose that you do not like.
If you can gaze sweetly at everything that comes up.
The anger, the rage, the sadness, the loneliness, the heartache,
the heartbreak, the melancholy,
the colliding chorus of emotions
that smash right into you,
in this pose.

I'm interested if you can sit in the vast ocean
in the murky waters
with wave after wave of everything that chooses to emerge
deep from within
where you mind doesn't care to go.

I'm interested if you can sit as still as can be
with all that is chaotically colliding
swirling and churning inside of you.

I'm interested if you can send your inhale
into the darkness
into the unknown
and retrieve your exhale
and begin again,
and again.
Giving the vast chasms of your soul
the sweetest caress
of your breath
with the most precious gift of your undivided
focused
one-sighted
single-minded
penetrating
attention.

I'm interested if you can sit with wave after wave
of the darkest unknown
allowing your inhales and
exhalations
to be with the stormiest of storms within.

[Lakshmi arose from the depths of it all
from turmoil,
from chaos
she emerged.
And she my friend
is within you.]

Underneath
what you perceive to be quite horrible,
buried deep within
are the most exquisite gifts
perhaps unimaginable
to you.
And I'm interested if you care
if you dare,
to allow them to emerge,
to rise to the surface
out of the crevices deep inside,
out of the darkness
And allow them to be seen.
Breathing
into all
and everything
in this pose.

This is what I am interested in.

© Jackie L Hutchings

Last night I placed myself upon my mat. Precisely like we did in class the day before. Except a folded blanket replaced the bolster. My shoulders, neck and head draped over the edge, into the earth. And I gave my breath my full attention. I watched the inhale move up my body and gently reach outward, moving into my arms, my hands, my shoulders, my neck, like the wind caressing the outreached branches of a tree. I watched it fall back down and flow toward my pelvic floor. Through my pelvic floor, out my legs, my feet, and my toes. And then once again pouring into me, filling me, flowing out, into every part of me as it moved towards my head. Like the ocean greeting the rocks. Searching for openings, crevices to explore. And then it flowed back out from me. Pulling away. And as I stayed with my breath, as I gave it my full attention, I traced wave after wave of my breath moving through me. In me. Forming an arc as it moved within. Like a pirate ship rocking back and forth over the rhythmic ocean. Swaying upward as it reached beyond my pelvic floor. Lingering for a moment above me before gently rushing down and upward, into the exhale arcing over my head. Pausing before its return. I began to feel its rhythm flow through me. Not knowing when the inhale stopped and the exhale began. I traced my breath. Or rather my breath traced me. Gently. Pulsating through me. I could see it, feel it, moving up and down, reaching into open spaces it had never explored before.

Pranayama, I had been steadily practicing for months now, but I had never given my breath my attention like this. Before. Counting it. Almost commanding it. Controlling it. Last night I gave it what it had been yearning for. I gave it the gift of my utmost attention. I gave it the joy, the ecstasy of freedom. I let it be. Allowing its true nature to reveal itself. In wave after wave after wave after wave. Crescendos overlapping diminuendos. The oceanic symphony within.

© Jackie L Hutchings