Chris Becker (pictured above) is my longest standing student – traditional or non-traditional.
I teach yoga to everyone – both to traditional students (people who seem not to live with any overt trauma, loss, or disabilities) and non-traditional students (those who do). I attempt to teach the same thing to both groups. It often looks very different.
Last week, I was trying to pass on the experiential meaning of a profound yogic insight that Senior Iyengar Yoga teacher Manouso Manos passed on to me about 15 years ago – “Realize the space between the muscles and the bones.” This is not uncommon. I have been trying to explore and share the implications of this insight ever since and will attempt to do so for the rest of my life.
In my non-traditional class, I was having students and assistants adjust each other. I was having them gently squeeze the muscle to the bone on each other’s forearm. When done well, this is a wonderful event. Relief, awareness, and the subtle body release not just through the forearm but throughout the entire physical body. When done well – and this means by the squeezer but also received well by the squeezee – the relieving sensation can be felt between both of them. The experience is quite remarkable. The goal of the activity is to offer experiential insight into the transcendent nature of subtle body sensation and its connection to how the muscle travels toward the bone in the performance of a yoga pose. Sounds simple huh? It is…if you can open your mind to the profundity of simplicity.
I have a student Chris Becker who had been coming to my non-traditional class since 1998. Chris lives with pretty severe cerebral palsy, which means, among hosts other things, asymmetrical firing of muscles, ligaments, and tendons throughout the body. Chris gets around in an electric wheelchair and struggles mightily with coordinated movement, including his hands, due to muscular contractures. He cannot bring his hands to his mouth, nor really pick anything up. Day and night, each of Chris’s hands look like it’s trying to take its own pulse. Speaking also takes extra effort.
Pause, absorb, and try to imagine what his life is like. Still, Chris remains undeterred and perhaps the most faithful student I have had throughout my teaching career.
I see that Chris is sitting quietly while the forearm squeezing activity is occurring. He waits patiently with his typical grin on his face. I approach him and say, “You’re not getting out of this.” He smiles even bigger; he is always game. I grab and squeeze his contracting forearm and wrist. A wave of relief cascades through his softening body. Both of us experience an intense surge of heat. Crazy thing about working with Chris: when his body gets to experience simple alignment and symmetry, an amazing amount of heat is produced in both him and everyone around him. Chris could melt snow. His heat release is famous among every one in that class.
I let go of Chris’s arm and say, “Your turn.”
Through his disarming smile and without judgment or hurt in is his eyes, Chris shakes his head and says, “I can’t do that.”
“Really? Challenge accepted,” I retort. On one level, Chris is correct. He cannot grab my forearm with his hands, let alone squeeze it. But there is something I try to teach yoga teachers that train with me: It’s the spines that adjusts, not the hands. Rather than have Chris grab my forearm, he presses the back of his wrist right into the meat of my forearm. It is very difficult for Chris to create consistent, firm contact against my arm because of his spasming. He struggles mightily to do so because he wants to do what everyone else is doing. But Chris’s realization must travel even deeper into transcendence than his fellow students. I tell him to let go of his struggle and trust in the lightness of his touch. Then I tell him to feel our connection and lift his chest while gently grounding his feet through the foot pedals of his wheelchair. The connection between us ignites and a wave a relief moves subtly through my body. Chris can feel it too and his eyes sparkle with delight, “Cool,” he says.
I sit there in chest-filling rawness. I realize that this may well be the first time Chris has ever touched someone from inside-to-out, at least through his arms and hands. He has spent a lifetime not being able to give and connect in a way that I so utterly take for granted. There is such beauty in human touch, such humanity. Chris smiles through his life without being able to fully participate on such a basic level. He does not become resentful or feel sorry for himself. He glows anyway. Transcendent beauty.
I doubt that the shared moment has nearly the impact on Chris as it does on me. We often say at my non-profit Mind Body Solutions that what we do is “Humanity disguised as yoga.” But I ask you: Which way do you think the humanity is flowing?