An osteopath friend told me a few months ago that my daughter tends to hinge at her hips and neck when she moves rather than moving her spine.  This comes as not surprise given that I have a rigid spine compared to the hyper mobile joints at my hips and shoulders.  Wanting to create balance in her body, I've been campaigning somewhat to get her to move from her spine more - "Look Rowan!  Can you roll like a ball?  Can you wiggle side to side like mama?"  I've seen some change in her ability to round her back more fully into flexion, but generally it's not been significant. 

As I was chasing her around the basement the other day, watching her half nudey body scamper in front me I suddently got a flash of the numerous influences that coalesce to create her.  She is a magnificent work of art born of forces that act on her in innumerable ways.  The rigidity of her spine is influenced by the force of genetics, habit, emotional countenance, birth conditions, her imitation of me, our daily activities (which are influenced by innumerable forces in themselves).  It gave me great satisfaction to know that my efforts to raise her in the best way I know how is only one force of many that create her complexity.  I can influence the course of her journey significantly, but I am not in control (much to my ego's chagrin).  So I add the force of my  love and care to the vast pool of influences and watch as they swirl her destiney into manifestation. 

I will never forget the impact of this insight.  It reminds me of the bigger picture of my life and the ways that I think that my idea of how things should be is only one force amongst a vast number trying to exert themselves on the vessel that I call "me".   History, ancestry, hormones, the unconscious, the weather, my hydration levels, social connection, thoughts, emotions and instincts are but a few of the significant influences that affect me on all layers of my being.  Can I be present to these layers?  Can I know the impact of the forces that dance my being into existence?  Yoga can help to tune in our awareness of these inummerable forces and with our intense attention start to see them more clearly.  This insight can inform our choices to become increasingly intelligent.  We can begin to see where the force of our own will belongs, not as master, but as a collaborator with the vibrations of a larger reality. 
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My daughter, Rowan, is a crucible through which the depth of my yoga practice has been tested. She was only home a month when I was besieged by post partum depression, colic and sleeplessness. One desperate day I settled, with feeble energy, into downward dog. I breathed there, listlessly, and felt my exhaustion. I breathed and felt the sensations of pain, fatigue and self doubt live their way through my body. I breathed until I became completely and honestly present to the deep ache of motherhood – the ache of immense fear, anger, fatigue, confusion – and love.

As I descended deeper into experience my awareness held this ache like an old friend it asked me to change nothing. It did not challenge me to open where I had been tense from hours of pacing with my child. It did not push me to stay and build greater strength where I was weak. Daniel Odier, a modern teacher of Tantra, says; “rediscover the peace of the gaze that wants nothing”. The gaze of my awareness wanted nothing that day; it simply held the immensity of my struggle without demand.

And then my baby began to cry. In days past that would have started my heart pounding but this time was different. The awareness that was birthed in on my mat simply grew larger to include her cries within it's Grace. This “gaze that wants nothing” was big enough to hold Rowan too. In that moment I was not afraid of what the next hour would bring, be it painful crying or playful calm. That day I had rediscovered the peace of being aware without demand. And, I came to realize that my baby's sleeplessness, her cries and her smiles were like the sensations and experiences of a downward dog. Not good, not bad, just simply there – the blessed expression of Spirit in it's many forms. From that day forward I met my daughter in a much different way. I no longer felt the same pressure to “fix” her restlessness or control her schedule to suit my ideas about what should be. I no longer took her discomfort personally as if I had failed as a mother because I had not eradicated her pain. In the past I had “perfectly” aligned everything to get her to sleep and eat. But she showed me that, like in asana, there was a natural intelligence that was moving her young evolution forward in it's own way regardless of my effort and ideas.

Now, with every asana, cry and giggle I am reminded of this Will that is far beyond my own and how it attempts to guide me in the soft moments when my ego forgets itself. My child has caused yoga to flood through my life. She is the ease and difficulty of a downward dog, the fire of kapalabhati breath and the soft silence of savasana. She is the flow of life, without apology and before ego takes hold. She is my child and the greatest asana I have ever lived.
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