Calling all wild things
Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1PqXn8mUbxccVxaN2aVCto?si=c77d59e5be9c4c38
Costa Rica Retreaters this one’s for you! I’ve been lesson planning, dreaming, and imagining the ecstasy of creative embodiment where all the wild things are breathing and beating their wings and swinging from vines near our shala. (my god, I can feel their wings beating in my heart beating!) Where the black sand and blue sea are dotted with red wings of the scarlet macaw and the fin of spouting whales. This is a practice imagining a practice in paradise near the equator from a cold grey December day in Baltimore.
One poetic description of Wild Thing Pose, Camatkarasana, is “the ecstatic unfolding of the unraptured heart.” To undomesticate ourselves we need to enliven that pool of energy dwelling at the pelvic floor and from there we have to strengthen our backs. Slumping, computers, exhaustion, cold, anxiety, self doubt, the uninvited male gaze towards my larger chested sisters, overextending to give to others but not give to yourself, and broken heartedness can close the heart space and sink the chest. Strengthen your back you step into your strength to open: to reclaim your wild, expansive heart. Let’s claw down into our fingertips. Let’s flip it open. Find a foothold that pushes you to the edge of your wildness. Turn your heart up to the wide open sky. It might be a bit of wild thing, you might flip deeper, it might become full wheel, we might find fluency and active glutes rolling all the way belly down to belly up, finding that fine sweet edge of control and surrender as you gain trust that your body knows the way. Some of us will walk the wheel! Some of us will Forearm Wheel, heart pulling through! We will stand on our forearms. We will bow to what is wild, playful, curious, undomesticated, and open.