Roots Before Branches

This morning I had a super interesting experience in my yoga class. I went to an Ashtanga led practice, which means I did more poses than I do in my own practice, including a series of four poses called Marichyasana A-D, all of which require a bind.

Now binding, for those who don't know, requires one to open the shoulders, and typically, this is difficult if not impossible for me to do. This morning, I was easily able to bind in each version, which surprised the hell out of me. I would have thought that after two rather stressful days with my parents, I would've closed my shoulders tighter. Instead, it seems that just allowing myself to be in that space with them, as painful as it was at some points, opened me.

I knew that was true of remaining in a yoga pose, but I didn't realize it was true about spending time with family with an open heart. Super cool. As hard as it is for many of us to make peace with the people we came from, it's such an important part of who we are -- mind, body and soul. We can try to deny that -- I should know because try I have -- but the body always remembers.

This afternoon I was watching the last episode of season 3 of Glee. It almost killed me to watch Finn and Rachel say goodbye to each other -- reminding me a bit as it did of a goodbye in my not-too-distant past -- but the blow was cushioned by the two of them singing (link to Glee) this lovely song (link to Room For Two):

I gotta have
Roots before branches
To know who I am
Before I know
Who I wanna be
And faith
To take chances
To live like I see
A place in this world
For me

Sometimes
I don't wanna feel
And forget the pain
Is real
Put my head
In the clouds
Oh, start to run
And then I fall
Thinkin'
I can't get it all
Without my feet
On the ground

There's always a seed
Before there's a rose
The more that it rains
The more I will grow

Whatever comes
I know how to take it
Learn to be strong
I won't have to fake it
Oh, you're understandin'
The wind can come
And do it's best
Blow me North and South
East and West
But I'll still
Be standing
I'll be standing

I gotta have
Roots before branches
To know who I am
Before I know
Who I wanna be
And faith
To take chances
To live like I see
A place in this world

Speaking of taking chances and living like I see a place in this world, the name of the original artist of this song compels me to tell a story of a time in my life that was characterized by doing just that. The autumn after I graduated from college, my friend and I decided to buy a 6-month, 4-stop airline ticket. We stopped first in Fiji, then New Zealand, then Australia, then Hawaii, but we spent the bulk of the time in Australia.

While in Oz, as I've written about before, we were pretty wild. Live-in nannies during the week, we'd literally spend our weekends in the bars (there's no such thing as bar time over there). On one specific occasion, my friend was working her magic to get us some free drinks by flirting with a guy at the bar. Eventually we all ended up going back to someone's flat to crash, and the drinks daddy was hoping to get lucky. My friend wasn't interested, though, so she gave him a classic excuse: she said it was her lady time, and something else was occupying the space he was hoping to enter.

"There's room for two!" he said -- and ever since, that phrase has always made us chuckle...