Getting Assistance in Doing Absolutely Nothing

This morning at the end of Yoga, the teacher offered assists in Savasana, the resting pose of lying flat on one's back like a corpse. Considering the absence of effort involved, you might think the idea of an "assist" would be--if you'll pardon the expression--overkill.

Every day of the week from June to October a different instructor offers leads a class of Outdoor Yoga on the farmfield behind Andrew's Greenhouse. They are all wonderful, as well as different from one another.   Even the substitute instructors are as good as the fabulous regulars. There is no point even having a favorite. 

But my most recent favorite was one I had last time. I was wary at first. He had long hair to his shoulders on one side, and his hair shaved close on the other.  He had gold round glasses and rings in the septum of his nose hanging under his nostrils. When I described his look later, my son said, that might sound unusual in the world, but sounds like what you would expect and hope for in a Yoga teacher. 

He also had a friendly and considerate, yet nervous affect. He came to each of us in the class at the beginning to personally deliver Yoga props and tools, when it seemed he could have just asked everyone to get them for themselves, or encouraged a volunteer to pass them out.

One of the props was a small smoothed stone from a zippered bag with a silly message printed on it. (I didn't read the message, but it was a novelty type bag.) Another was a cardboard disk, like a coaster for beer. On one side it was yellow and said, "Yes, assist please!" and on the other green side, it said, "No assist, thank you."

These props did not come into play until the very end of the hour when everyone was invited to be receive an assist on ankles, shoulders and the crown of the head--"or not!" If we didn't want an assist, we were instructed to simply turn the disk to the the "No assist" side.

It struck me as a good model of how to give agency to the person who might invite physical contact. I know I had a little fear, just on principle, of being touched by someone I don't know, who is definitely eccentric while I am vulnerably lying on the ground, in a state of thorough trust in undefendedness--openess to Death, essentially.

But I am often game for laying myself open to what lay beyond the reflexes of ego and self-defense, which you can only experience by applying some willingness to encounter the unknown at the edge. It is the point of Yoga and Meditation, for me, to get familiar and even begin to get comfortable with doing just that.

Besides, the social structure of yoga, community yoga, the trustworthy context of people cooperating to find a greater easy in community, and the obvious care and precision with which our instructor approached the hour helped fortify my trust.

Even so, it was an act of boldness to intentionally flip the coaster to "Please assist!" I didn't really know what form the assist would take, or what the energy and intention of the person "assisting" me would be. I just trusted, as we do at various points in our lives, that overcoming the habits of caution that lead us to be self-protecting is more valuable than reflexively keeping the unknown away.

What resulted was a brief but potentially transformative moment of realization. Because I had met the moment halfway--that is, I had signaled my willingness to be assisted when I didn't know what that would entail, I felt like I could have an experience, rather than react to an experience coming at me.

Here's what I noticed:

Firm hands on my shoulder pressing down, like a CPR compressions, showed me how I could interrupt the continual mild tension they were under and turn that work over to the pressing hands. I was surprised how it felt to turn that effort over, that had been there even when I had considered my shoulders empty of tension.

The wiggling of my ankles and touching of the top of my head reminded me of the currents of subtle energy that are flowing there when I can relax and notice them. I was freshly reminded that there is a world of phenomena that fails to register with me usually because bodily survival habits involve continual efforting and living in tension and worry that prevent a fuller awareness.

After he did these quick ministrations, he placed a stone in my hand before moving to the next person. I lingered in relaxation, noticing the weight of the stone, and making a resolution remember this. I appreciated how the stone was a kind of souvenir of just this sort of moment of awareness. 

At the end of class I let him know how much I appreciated the class and the experience he provided. He seemed happy to hear this. I can imagine this is one of the satisfactions of being a yoga teacher--to provide these moments, and feel how the liberation of everyone is part of the liberation of the self.