What is your Edge?

Married to an off-road motorcyclist rider, one would probably conclude…I live life on the edge anyway; with an automated manicure system fitted between my teeth 😊

But my journey on yoga has taught me some strange yet very enlightening life lessons. You can experience “your edge” almost anywhere, any time and because of anything.

Edges are of any nature.

The easier one to understand because of its tangibility is the physical edge – You experience it either because of fascial, muscular, skeletal and/or other structural limitations or even because of the sheer limitations your body poses, due to an overall lack of exercise. You can uncover your edge, move it further away, as you fit in more repetitions, more time for exercise.

Disciplines like yoga, tai chi and qi gong and even mental/spiritual curve balls of Vipassana, meditation, solitude, loss of a valued relationship or purpose, or even, the complexity of day-to-day living, by itself, can take you to the second kind of edge- the emotional edge. Or the lack of coffee, maybe?  😊

As yoga teachers, we sometimes experience these with our students who walk in with high levels of exhaustion and stress and a simple asana could move them to tears.

A third edge is the psychological one – you could experience this over your different life stages as concepts, changes in your thinking, altered states of consciousness and awareness. This is triggered, as you experience life events or even through conscious interventions such as psychedelics, shamanistic rituals and more.

This brings us to the last edge- the spiritual edge- the hardest to explain as it sits in the opposite end of the spectrum on palpability but in its very essence, “where boundaries cease to exist”. Bernie Clarke, in his book, “Your Body, Your Yoga” talks about this in further detail and says there is no attachment or detachment and you start to view friends and family in the same way you see everyone else or vice versa. There is no self and other. Tat Tvam Asi! You are it.

But before this begins to feel like “Should I read this again in Canada after access to some dried leaves” here is the beauty of the edge. You can back off/recede from it, come back to it and push it further out – all within the boundaries of a simple rectangular piece of mat. The greatest growth comes in discomfort.

Read more to hear about how I experienced my edge in Vrkshasana…

In yoga, you experience asanas/poses that resonate with your personality and body and yes, it is Vrkshasana for me. For those who know me, I make a great Vrksh (tree) and I continue to have a love/hate relationship with this pose.

I have now made peace with it. I have good days – where my tree is immovable and bad days, when you aren’t sure if it’s the branches or the bark or the very roots that are swaying from side to side.

During my yoga teacher training, we were asked to prepare sequences of poses and I recall my teacher telling me “You can put Vrkshasana upfront as one of the first three poses when you take the class”. I looked at her skeptically and said “But Vrkshasana is a mirror into my mental state of mind – how can I reveal it all and that too…. at the beginning of the class?”

However, the sheer beauty of yoga is your ability to experience the edge in the simplest and subtlest of ways. It’s that micro, micro, micro millimeter of change. Infinitesimal.

Try this at home and would love to hear your experience.

Vrkshasana

Basic Pose – Stand, with your back against the wall. Shift your weight to the left leg. Bend your right knee. Reach down with your right hand and hold your right ankle. Place the sole of your right foot against the thigh of the left standing leg. Rest your hands on your pelvis. Stand for 3 full breaths.

Move the edge further …

Repeat pose with instructions below, but on a cumulative basis.

–        Edge 1 – Press right heel into inner left groin, toes pointing towards the floor

–        Edge 2 – Draw the outer hip bone of the standing leg inwards

–        Edge 3 – Raise your hands overhead

–        Edge 4 – Draw upper arms into shoulder, draw finger tips to the ceiling

–        Edge 5 – Move away from the wall (obviously, starting all over again unless you want to hop 😊)

–        Edge 6 – Lengthen tailbone towards the floor

–        Edge 7 – Draw your gaze to the floor 4 to 5 feet away in front of you

–        Edge 8 – Draw your gaze to your nose

–        Edge 9- And then…and then…and then she asked me to close my eyes (to remove any external references on balance)

Enjoy marinating in your pose for increased breaths and have a yogi-kinda day.

P.S. You don’t need to spend money or travel or indulge in an adrenalin pumping, heart stopping hobby, to experience the edge.

References: Your Body, Your Yoga by Bernie Clark