If you bring forth what is within you, what is within you will save you.
If you do not bring forth what is within you, what is within you will destroy you.
– Jesus, Thomas Gospel

An amplified voice cracks like an ocean storm beyond the relative safety of the stage alcove.   The linoleum floor turns to ice under my bare feet.  Applause bursts intermittently, like passing hail showers.  How many people are our there, I wonder.  And how many are out there because of me?  Down the side hall segregated from the full auditorium, I see women lined up out of sight wearing skin-tight one-piece. suits.  The men around me stand shirtless dressed only in speedos or short- shorts, most just looking at the floor.  I take a deep breath and wonder what the hell I am doing here.  From the hidden audience, a familiar laugh bobs to the surface.  Part of me clutches after it as if I’m chasing a life-preserver.  Maybe one person, my mind says.  Maybe one person that we know.
The applause shower bursts again.
“That sounds like a LOT of people out there,” a kid very close to me says.
I could not agree with him more.

The email announcing an Arizona Asana Championship was forwarded to me by a friend.  “You should enter,” he said.  I had toyed with the idea several times over the years.  The first was fourteen or so years ago when a yogi named Tony Sanchez wanted to make yoga an olympic event and had encouraged me to try it out.  But the idea of yoga and competition seemed so contrary to me that I never really considered entering such an event very seriously.  I also knew that these competitions were organized by the Bikram camp and was based on Bikram poses done in the Bikram way with Bikram judges.  Though I deeply appreciate Bikram Yoga (and in many ways Bikram himself), my body loves a flow and alignment that does not always agree with the Bikram commands.
But this time… This time there is some other subtle pull in me to look closer at this competition.  Along with just a little anxiety.
“No Thanks”, I reply to my friend before deleting the email just a little too quickly.  I tell myself once again that this whole event is not for me.

The applause offstage storms louder.  The amplified voice swells into a climactic thunder.  A sudden signal, felt more than it is heard.
The line in front of me begins to move.
“Do you really think anyone came?” the kid asks backstage.  Though I nod invisibly, I’m not really sure at all.  I hear my name being called from beyond the shelter of the linoleum alcove.  Already I’m falling behind.
“Don’t look for anyone,” the kid says as I step carefully from icy linoleum to the edge of the stage.  “It’s better not to look.”

I am stuck.  I sit to meditate in the yoga room at my house.  The mind stays very active.  I decide to observe the flow.
My thoughts circle slowly around my childhood like water going down a drain.  As an adult I knew that I had honestly worked through being made fun of as a child.  My childhood was blessed in so many ways and I honestly don’t feel that growing up for me was any more difficult or painful than it was for anyone else.  I truly understood why those kids called me names and knew what it was like to be a kid in pain, so resolving this as a young adult I came to a point where I felt only compassion and with that came a forgiveness that was not even forgiveness, just an understanding bounded by some intuitive inner love that I feel for all kids, even the ones who made fun of me.  A love that most kids, even babies, seem to have for me.
Still sitting in meditation, I experience that the previous thoughts are true.  I experience a vague general tension in my body.  I experience that I really am at peace with what happened when I was a child, and yet… There is something else, something I am not seeing.  I attempt to trace this lack of sensation back to where it emerged.
One of the bigger mysteries in my life for the past twenty years has always been why some part of me still felt like a child.  That no matter how old I was, it seemed there was still some childhood-part of me that had not grown up yet.  This feeling was especially strong when I was on the verge of making big changes in my inner or outer life.  At these periods I would feel like a woolly mammoth stuck in a tar-pit and all of my yogic struggling only sank me in deeper.  A few months before the competition this feeling of “stuckness” – of arrested development – had heightened dramatically.
Maybe this yoga competition is a doorway.
I take a deep breath and my chest feels tight, compressed as if filled with a heavy syrup.  I experience a deep sadness.
After years of conscious work I still did not know why this stuck feeling emerges at key moments in my life.  I could not figure out why there was still that one part of me, of Jeff the adult, that felt like it had been left behind. This child in me even seemed to have a name: “Jeffie”.  A name that my niece and nephews still use when we all play together.  “Jeffie.”  A name which my good friend Amy would always call me.  Sitting in meditation at that moment I knew that if I did enter this competition, somehow it was supposed to be for him.

My name is called out and it echoes like a stranger’s in my ears.  Someone else’s legs float me slowly out into a vastness of bright lights, pointed shouts and cresting applause.  I look around and see the audience through a thin, gauzy mist.  It’s like staring through the breath-haze left on a window pane.  For a moment the cloudiness keeps me from looking deeper into the audience.  And perhaps this is good.  Maybe the kid was right after all, I think.  Maybe it is better not to look.
I float after my fellow competitors, the only contestant not affiliated with a local Bikram school.  Through the din of applause comes yelled greetings in familiar voices, odd lightning flashes of encouragement making their way through a glass wall.  This show of support feels extremely odd, undeniably foreign.  Voices seem freakishly bright and the spotlights too loud.  More shouts of support, loving faces that I do not quite allow myself to see.  Two people call to me and then I see them, waving from the audience stage right.  The surge of gratitude and terror feels like an electric shock I once got from handling a frayed extension cord.  I wave at them and discover the first hint of a love that I never allowed myself to experience before. These people are here for me.  It is a baffling moment.  Terrifying.  Alien beyond belief.  I struggle mightily to open my heart wide enough to take in this love but the resulting flood of fear combined with intense vulnerability makes me want to dive right off the stage.

Sitting behind my desk three weeks after deleting the yoga competition email, I find it again.  The room feels infinitesimally brighter.  I open it and hit return, visiting the website.  Sure enough, my mind says.  Though the event claims to be open to all schools of yoga, the whole competition is Bikram oriented.  You should go, I remember my friend saying.  Suddenly I feel nervous, like a fish swimming too close to an open net.  Am I actually considering doing this, I think?  Am I going to train my body to hold a pose contrary to what I feel optimal alignment is?  If it was a legitimate competition really inclusive of all, there are non-Bikram yogis who could blow everyone, including me, away if they entered this.  So it’s not even a real competition.  I dig deeper for all the reasons I shouldn’t go, and the fact that I am arguing against entering scares me outright.  I protest mightily at the format and the whole idea of a ‘yoga competition’ to begin with.  But instead of flickering away under this whirlwind of self-righteousness, that subtle glow of interest grows stronger.  You need to do this, the glowing tells me.  You need to do this in your life right now.
A true, cold, black wave of fear swells in the distance and starts rolling closer from somewhere beyond my computer screen.  I quickly drop myself inside clear, thick walls of resistance and close all the hatches, hoping to dive far away from this strange new urging.
The screen saver for my computer flashes on, hiding the competition web page behind seascape pictures and sandy beaches.  As if on cue I am once again remembering my childhood.  For about ten years while growing up I was made fun of for having a big nose.  The first time it happened I was shocked.  I was a very skinny six year-old with severe asthma.  And yet it had never occurred to me that there might be something ‘wrong’ with the way that I looked.  No matter how old I  grew it would always start out the same way.  I would be playing or talking or competing in sports and if a teacher wasn’t around I could feel it coming.  Certain kids would start looking at me, or more specifically at my nose.  After staring a while longer, the name-calling would begin.  The most popular approach was to blurt out some name like ‘Pinnochio’ or ‘Martian’ (as in ‘Jeff Martian’, a variation of my last name meant to reflect my alien appearance).  Then there was the less imaginative “big nose.”  Or the straight question approach, almost like an infomercial: “Did you know that you have a really big nose?”  In these situations, fighting only drew more attention to myself and running away felt cowardly, so I would just stand my ground or maybe laugh along with them at myself and go to some very quiet inner chamber where I could observe the whole scene unfolding through bullet-proof plexiglas walls.
Shorelines and palm trees and white sandy beaches cross-fade one into the other across my computer screen, blending into a tranquil and numbing flow.  I can feel myself hiding inside.  I know that I am at peace with those kids making fun of me,  I know I don’t identify with their name calling and yet there is something else I feel now.  What is it, I ask myself.  What is it that is causing all this fear?
On the web page that is now hidden behind a lone palm bearing coconuts at blue water’s edge, I know there is a link telling me that the deadline for entering this yoga competition is looming closer.  I put my computer to sleep and avoid the urging to sign up that feels like a tidal wave fast approaching.
For seven days I hide, curled safe inside a protective inner chamber, refusing to spin open the sound-proof, air-tight doors.

‘Abreaction’ is a psychoanalytic term that was coined by Freud.  It signifies the release of emotional energy that has been held in the pattern of an individual’s psyche from some past emotional trauma.  It is not enough, Freud said, to merely remember and then talk about the event.  It is necessary to relive the initial experience in the telling.  Such a cathartic purging allows the afflicted patterning of consciousness to evolve into a multidimensional unfolding that is altogether evolutionary for the individual’s concept of who he really is.
As the audience continues to clap its greeting for the swim-suited contestants, I reach a large, familiar painting of Bishnu Ghosh.  I know this image from my earlier incarnation as a Bikram yoga teacher in the early 90s.  The reaction to stop is instinctual and causes a slight traffic jam.   Bishnu Ghosh is Paramahansa Yogananda’s brother and Bikram’s teacher and it feels dishonorable to place myself in front of this painting.  Competitors keep streaming onto the stage, the women filing out in a steady wave.  It is becoming very obvious that we will not all fit unless the men in front of me move.  Luckily they do so and give me more room so that I do not have to block the guru’s image.
In yogic terms abreaction is the beginning of the end of that deep groove or tendency where we see ourselves to be a certain way.  Ugly, fat, beautiful, old, superior, ignorant, spiritual, healthy, unlovable.  This is ‘vasana’ in Sanskrit, the layout of groove-like psychic and neuronal canals which the black water of habitual action or samskara follows.  From the most subtle thought to the actual physical behavior, a repetitive patterning of glial cells gathers to strengthen repeatedly accessed neural nets.  Here is how we come to define ourselves and what is possible or not in our lives on a very physical level.  From this deep groove of initial self-perception, samskara or painful habitual reactions spring forth like weeds, providing the ample if false proof that we are who we consider ourselves to be based on all that has passed in this lifetime.
And here, on this stage standing in tight spandex and nylon shorts beside the image of Bishnu Ghosh, I try again to look into the crowd.  This time I see a few more familiar faces, hands waving.  Friends, coworkers, teachers, dear students, and my mom.  These are people that I love.  And they are here to see me.  My heart feels like it is doing the splits against its will.  The speaker stops talking and we turn to leave in preparation for our individual events amid a burst of renewed applause.  I look away from the crowd, eyes welling, my vision beginning to blur.  An old habitual stirring: some small part of me rises through uncertainty, still not believing that so many of these people could actually be here for me.  Walking off-stage in front of this audience peppered with familiar faces, I sense that somehow in the deepest currents of how I see myself, my life is about to change.

“You are tempting fate,” I tell myself.  It is a new month and I find myself waiting, still stuck.  Three friends have noticed that my energy feels low, and, without knowing what I am considering, they each encourage me to try out something new.  Stuck in inaction, I console myself with the thinking that if I was meant to be in the competition I would get in no matter what.  Finally, after once again facing my inner arguments against the competition, I revisit the website and am a bit stunned to see that the competition is in one week.
A sudden fear rises hot inside me like a fever.  The registration deadline has passed the day before.
I am traveling deep in some foreign country and have just missed the last train to the airport that was my only link back home.  Oh please God don’t let me miss this.  The need, the necessity in this prayer shocks me with its urgency.  With a great desperation I look for an entry form.   A psychic sucking ensues: the frightening sound of me lifting one foot up out of the mental tar-pit of my own tamasic goo.
“But why do this?” I hear myself ask with feigned stupidity.
Because, Jeff, the queasiness in my gut answers, this asana competition really can get along quite nicely without you.  But YOU, my friend, cannot get along quite so nicely without it.

I take my place out of sight, fourth in line back on the cold linoleum, and force my breath to calm.  Muted applause trickles into excited rustles and the speaker resumes his microphone patter.  Contestants move around backstage and down the long side hall, distant eyes visualizing their own familiar routines made suddenly strange by being here.  There are people I know out in the crowd.  People I love.  I feel like I am either drowning or drawing very close to something.  The first contestant is called out and I cannot see what is happening.  A kid’s voice very close to me asks what is going on.  And even now on the verge of my individual performance, I am not quite certain what exactly the answer is supposed to be.

My standing knee wobbles.  My hands and foot are wet and slippery.  I fall out of my most challenging pose, standing head-to-knee, in the final few seconds and try to pick it back up again.
“Release,” the instructor says.
 I shut out the part of my brain that is wondering how I will ever be able to hold that pose up on a stage.
“Standing Bow,” the teacher calls into the 100-degree room.
I lift my arm, grab my inner ankle and begin to kick.  Sweating in standing bow pose in the middle of a Bikram class as part of my ‘training,’ I look at my reflection in the mirror and see a sense of purpose in my eyes.  It is five days before the Arizona Regional Asana Championships.  Lucky for me my late application was accepted.  Halfway into the minute hold, I realize that I have been ‘training’  for this competition long before I officially registered.  That some part of me knew I would be entering this event for quite a while.  I remember clearly a defining moment over a month ago where I decided that I would just act as if I was going to be in the competition, just to help myself have a little more discipline and motivation to attend to my daily practice.
“Release,” the teacher says.
Sweat cascades down my chest and arms, dripping off me like fat monsoon rain drops.  Afterward, the scale in the changing room will show that I have lost three, maybe four pounds of water.  I will literally be able to wring my oversized micro-fiber mat towel out like a soaked sponge and sweat will shower onto the parking lot as if I were pouring a pitcher of water.  The teacher is demonstrating how to kick out in the pose.  I look at the Bikram alignment and practice non-judgment.  The instructor is kind and experienced and non-dogmatic, common at this studio but still a little rare in the Bikram world.  She laughs at herself with us often.  I even consider her to be a friend.  The only thing she does that troubles me is the way she makes fun of herself.  I want to hug her every time she eviscerates herself with brutal sarcasm at the slightest mispronounciation of a word.
Holding my inner ankle, I take a deep inhale and start the other side.  It feels very odd, yet oddly empowering to force my leading shoulder up and away instead of integrating the arm in the shoulder socket in order to lengthen more from my core.  Finding balance, I reflect on how good it is to be doing something that I truly want to do and know that I am supposed to do with all of my heart.  Even if I knew I was going to have a heart attack on stage, I swear to God I would still go through with this, I think.  Besides, it won’t be that bad.  Yes I will be putting myself ‘out there’.  Yes, I am deliberately placing myself in front of judges and will have to risk and be vulnerable.  Yes it will have to be Bikram style.  Yes I will be wearing a speedo.  But maybe I can find a fuller-cut speedo.  i refuse to shave and tan my crotch just to practice yoga!  So I can do this.  I can go there, get in and out, and no one will have to know about it.  It will be hard to walk out on that stage and do the opposite of hiding and not-standing-out, but I can–
“Release!”
I stand in tadasana and look in the mirror as if just arriving in the room.  How about we come back to this moment, Jeff?  I breathe deeply.  And then, as if from a great distance, quieter than the sweat-drops pattering onto my mat:
You need to ask people, Jeff.
I ignore this message so perfectly it is as if nothing was ever heard.
I  can do this, I quietly tell my reflection in the mirror.  I can do this and nobody will ever have to know.

The crowd is absolutely silent, focused on the third contestant out on the stage.  I watch the man in front of me finish his routine, holding my breath to help him complete a final pose.  The crowd erupts into applause as he walks off the stage and I shake his hand in passing.  The judges set to their tabulations.  He is done, a part of me jealously notes.  I step up to the edge of the stage and make myself breathe, waiting.
“I don’t want to go out there.”
The words are very clear and come from close by as if off to my left near a large planter.  I feel a boundless wave of love and compassion rise in me.  In my mind I see myself crouching down and placing a hand on a frail, asthmatic shoulder.  My reply is calm and strong.
“I will take care of you.”
“But I don’t want to go.”  The terror is palpable.
“That’s all right,” I say.  “You don’t have to go.”
“What’s going to happen?”  the kid asks.
“I will go out there for both of us.  You can stay right here,” I indicate a space near the planter.  “You can watch if you want and I will come back for you after it is done.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
“Okay.”
“Jeff Martens,” the announcer’s voice booms.  “Inner Vision Yoga.”
The audience claps.  I hear loved ones cheer.
It is time.
I step onto the stage alone.

It is Wednesday night, three days before the yoga competition.  I go about my business doing some work on the web.  My mind wanders to the upcoming competition.  The whole thing will be over soon enough, I note.  And whether I fail or do great, no one will ever have to know.  I answer an email and idly wonder if I would tell anyone about the competition after I was done.
A slight growl of asthmatic breath stops me in my tracks.
I don’t have asthma.  Have not had it in over thirty years.  But there it is again.  Immediately familiar.  A purling growl of tightness in my chest.
You are supposed to ask people.
I rise up from my desk and pace around my house like a caged animal.  Oh, I can’t do that, I plead.  Please don’t make me do that.  Yet there is no place to hide, no escape from the inevitability of what I must do next.
You are supposed to ask people, the calm infinite voice that is not a voice says inside my head.
The feeling of terror is so powerful I can smell it like ozone in the air.  Even as I walk laps around my house I am stunned at the strength of some inner reaction that can only be characterized as absolute dread.
Compared to registering, compared to the speedo, compared even to the idea of going out there in front of judges and strangers, this idea of asking people I know to come to this competition literally makes me want to vomit.  There is no way, no way, this was not part of the deal.  Panicking, I pace back to my office. This cannot be done.
You are supposed to ask people…
I am 9 years old and have a little league baseball game.  I want my mom to come, I want to tell her to come but I don’t.  I can’t because I can’t let her see me being made fun of.  So instead I tell her not to come.  I tell her that I don’t really want her there.
You are supposed to ask people that you like…
I am 10 and playing basketball with friends when some eighth-graders try to take over our court.  When I refuse to leave they start making fun of me.  To keep the peace I laugh at myself along with them as my friends join in or slink away.
Ask people that you care about, people you really love…
I am 11 and a girl I have a crush on is walking by at the same time a group of popular kids are approaching me.  I walk into the approaching storm, a fake smile leading the name-callers out of earshot from the girl that I adore.
You are supposed to ask people…
The scenes of self-isolation repeat over and over with family members, friends and intimate relationships growing up.  A constant push-pull, the titanic clash of wanting to be seen and loved and supported versus the ingrained reflex to protect myself from the deepest humiliation of someone I love seeing me being made fun of.  Or even worse.
Incredibly, as if this is new information, I am now an adult standing inside my own house and wheezing.  The full impact of years of self-imposed isolation fills my lungs like tar.  Completely stunned, I begin to cry. 
You are supposed to tell others, the timeless voice says. 
And then from beside me a child’s words spoken out loud with my adult tongue, the anguish and force of my tears so deep that my ears can hardly understand their meaning.  Yet no words are necessary to comprehend dread so deeply rooted that it takes my breath away.
“But what if no one comes?”
I will take care of you, the voice answers.
“What if I mess up?” this kid’s voice sobs so close to me.
I am taking care of you.
“What if no one comes?”
It doesn’t matter if anyone comes, I answer in that strange peaceful adult voice now vaguely recognizable as my own.  It is the asking that is important.  You are just supposed to ask.
“What if no one comes,” the child asks again, the sobbing beginning to slow.
I am taking care of you, I reply, and I am unsurpassed strength and tenderness.  My heart feels bigger than Jupiter.  Even as the tears fall I feel the dawning of a unifying energy inside me far vaster than the sun.
“What if no one comes?” the kid’s voice asks one more time.
I am taking care of you.  I repeat it over and over.  The wheezing stops as the soothing voice continues, and I stand there a long time fathering the terror out of my lungs, talking in an adult voice so harmonious that it literally calms me to the bone.

The sun is shining outside my yoga-room window.  It is three days after the competition.  I switch from sphinx pose to upavistha konasana and resume writing in my journal:

So what did you learn, Jeff?  What did you experience?  Well for one thing I experienced again what it was like to be caught in the middle of two titanic inner-forces.  The yearning to be loved, supported and recognized by people that I love on one hand.  The fear of rejection, judgment and ridicule on the other.  It was beyond description to cultivate these two simultaneous conditions consciously.  At their collision point I can feel how this is the genesis for most if not all of the inertia in my life… Somehow the alchemy of … deliberately placing myself in a situation that I abhor and then inviting those I love to be with me and then taking care of myself and staying as present as possible as it happens, somehow this is all still working in me.  It is something that I must continue, that I want to continue…

I also know that this is where I have felt like a part of me has never quite fully grown up yet.  Here is where I still felt a bit like a child and not fully an adult.

At the competition, before it was my turn to step out on stage for my three minutes, standing at the edge and waiting, that child part of me, that Jeffie, he said – I don’t want to go out there.  Such a feeling of fear, even terror.  Everything at once, being in the spotlight, nowhere to hide, being exposed for full scrutiny, being judged – and then people I loved, people I cared about so deeply, all of them out there to really see me and possibly see me fail.  Or even worse, the most terrifying thing of all – to see me laughed at or made fun of.

Oh.

And here I come to a deeper realization even now as I write this… for this kid in me, this Jeffie had always believed that if they saw me fail and be ridiculed that they would no longer want to be my friend and that they would just run away.

Oh… It’s okay, Jeffie.

Because I knew.  I knew what it was like to be made fun of.  And if they stayed with me they would risk being made fun of by association, especially if I messed up or drew attention to myself.  And because I knew how much it hurt to be ridiculed, I would just try and keep them away…

Oh.

So at the precipice, with only a few seconds left before I had to step out on that stage, that Jeffie in me is just freezing.  “I don’t want to go out there,” he tells me.  I literally can hear/feel this at the competition.  And the response in me, it warms my heart, for I felt such love, such compassion for this little boy.  “You don’t have to go out there,” I said.  “You can stay right here.  You can wait for me right here and I’ll come back and get you.  I will take care of you.  You don’t have to go out there at all.”

Oh, he was glad for that.  Relieved.  And yet I felt his absence in a strange way, and felt like he joined me right in the middle of bow pose, with a powerful aligning snap of my sacrum.

Oh.

For that was the point where he made the choice to come out and be with me.  That was the point where I realized that I needed him as much as he needed me.  That was the point where I started to have a little more fun and actually enjoy the moment.  That was the point where I began to feel myself breathe.

For this was the point where that part of me – the yearning to be seen, to feel and experience love – became stronger than the fear of being shamed or ridiculed.

Here was the point of love.  This is why I was there.  To allow myself to make a choice in that moment that I could never fully allow myself to make before.

I put the journal down, sit up and close my eyes.  I was right at the very beginning.  This wasn’t about forgiving those other kids for making fun of me.  I had already done that.  This was about something much harder.
A slight breeze lilts the tallest branches of the desert acacia that shades the side of my house.  A bird sings outside the open window of my yoga room.  Once again I find that I am crying.  It feels like a cleansing and healing sigh.  A joyful breath of gratitude fills my lungs.
This wasn’t about me forgiving those other kids at all.  This was about me forgiving myself.

“Jeff Martens,” the announcer’s voice booms.  “Inner Vision Yoga.”
The audience claps.  I hear loved ones cheer.
It is time.
I step onto the stage alone.
When I look at the audience the love I feel is beyond imagining.  I had sent out more than 20 emails.  Many of those people and others who heard are here right now.  Who knew that I could love so many people?  Or that so many people could care about me?
Walking before all these loved ones, I move to the cross taped on a square of carpet center-stage and gaze into the crowd.  Out here alone there are no more glass walls to hide behind, no portals tightly sealed.  I feel bare.  Exposed completely.  I am naked to the core. The reflex is visceral.  My exposed skin wants to crawl right off my body.
Seeing so many people that I care about, I almost forget to bow to the judge’s table and quickly do so.
“Quarter turn right.  Quarter turn right.  Quarter turn right.”
I stop in the center, again facing into the crowd.
“Begin.”
“Standing head-to-knee,” I say.  I turn to my right and take a breath.  The clock starts as soon as I lift my knee.
I can feel my standing leg wobble.  My mind seems very quiet.  If I can just touch my forehead to my knee…
The unthinkable happens.  I fall out of the pose.  For a moment I am devastated.  My heart fels like it is breaking.  And yet nobody laughs.  Nobody ridicules.  Nobody points and walks out of the room.  Everyone I care about stays seated.  No one calls me names.  I can feel the kid watching me very closely from the side of the stage now, waiting to see what I will do next.
“Standing bow,” I say.
Halfway into standing bow, the kid steps into the light and starts walking toward me, his child’s eyes wide and blinking in the unfamiliar glare.
I am taking care of you…
Suddenly my body grows stronger.  I kick my raised leg higher and it feels good to have him there.
“Bow,” I say, moving to the floor.
Moving very close now, the boy watches me intently.
I am taking care of you…
I kick deeper into the bow pose.  Suddenly I breathe easier.  In this moment he trusts me completely and kneels beside my bow.  So close now I no longer see him.  My sacrum pops into place.  And now there is a playfulness, a wholeness that is liberating.  For the first time on stage I truly enjoy myself.
I am taking care of you…
Only later, after I have finished my final pose, do I realize with surprise how much I really needed him…  I had always thought it was the other way around.   And writing this even now, I recall so many times when I had joined in the very ridicule of myself in the name of self protection and trying to preseve some outer peace.  And as an adult I cast off with an open heart upon the strange new waters of recognizing fusion, consciously appreciating for the first time the depth of a love that comes from truly letting go.

Jeff Martens is a teacher, writer and co-owner of Inner Vision Yoga.  All suggestions are voluntary.  Consult a qualified teacher, your heart and/or your physician before you embark on any practice in which you are unfamiliar.