In a yoga session
I put my body into cobra pose, upward facing dog and tree pose

Transitioning through asanas
Letting all absences of the past
Fade away for now

All that could have been and was not
The memories, the sadnesses

Unlived lives

Elegant, expansive, physical states

A butterfly emerging from the cocoon

Yet I notice a black shame
An energetic blockage
dragging me inwards
Black oil

My inner Daniel Plainview
The maniac
Explosions of turbulence
Amidst the oil fields of California

My inner Captain Ahab
Pure ego

Lacanian death drive?
The obscene master of jouissance?

Be wary of anger
It has life’s strength in it
But it acidifies quickly into cyanide

Consciously I’ve been telling myself that I’ve released the shame
The body (unconscious) signals otherwise

The inner critic is a well known aggressor
Less well known is inner passivity

Pulsation = a natural flow between expansion and contraction
Optimal functioning

A lion, charging along the Serengeti
Overtaking the instant
Moves free through eternity

A peacock spreads its feather tail
All glory and colour
Resplendent in its being

Nowhere in pulsation are there blushes of embarrassment
Nowhere in a flower is there a refusal to blossom

I am a new practitioner of yoga
A devotee to I.K.S Iyengar

I’ve become a spiritualist wellness yogi
Oh dear

I put my hands over my ears
When the instructor tells me to enjoy myself and be happy, that’s all

Who knows, maybe there is a way to tether happiness to existential meaning?

For a while I thought anxiety was authentic
An anti-liberal flag of rebellion
Pitched in a landscape of sickness

Now the Buddha’s appeals
To health and confidence
Ring truer

Tuning into chemical, sensory signals of the body
Brings more presence than rationality

Ruth, Sraddhagita and Athos are skilled and elegant in their asanas
Their personalities follow suit

Stay firm in warrior one
Uncomfortable sensations rise into awareness
Wanting to be felt

Transmute psychic tension
into physical and emotional energies
And release
Through the shining heart
Through the deathless realm

All dharmas converge on feeling
Learn to navigate the realm of feeling

The Buddha recognized the temptation to go abstract
And refused it

My empathy, such as it is, is cognitive and philosophical
not affective,
not acted out

Soma – feeling – affect – action