By the time I got there, I had calmed down a bit and was looking forward to the practice. The first half hour or so was pretty intense with lots of vinyasa flow. I was starting to feel calm and starting to even enjoy myself. I felt proud for having gotten there, felt powerful in many of the postures, and could feel myself beginning to relax into the moment.
Then we got to Pigeon pose.
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| F'ing Pigeon. |
Now, I have always a love/hate relationship with pigeon. It's never my favorite pose to do (it's physically intense), and I generally find myself worrying the whole time that I'm not doing it "right." (For some reason I worry about that way more for this posture than for any other one. Huh.) So it's usually a physical and emotional challenge and I end up dreading it every week as a result.
But tonight I totally lost it.
We got into pigeon, and all of the sudden I just started sobbing. Like, all-out, blubbering, red-face, splotchy-messed sobbing.
Without any warning, I had these visions of Lucy. This incredibly intense longing I still feel for her. What I wouldn't give to have her on my lap one more time, to give her one more pet. How guilty I feel that I was anxious when her back legs went numb and that I wasn't able to bring her calm and peace before we brought her to the emergency vet. What an agonizing decision it was to put her down, and the blind trust I saw in her eyes as we made that decision. How incredibly lonely I felt as I held her still body. How I couldn't bear to leave her alone in that room, even knowing she was already gone. How empty our house still feels without her.
And, at the same time, I also had this realization in Pigeon pose of how quickly her death helped me to be aware of how miserable I was in other areas of my life. That I had gotten myself out of one horrific work situation, yet had been placed into another equally horrific one. That, because of losing her and Mac, I realized that my family was still my number one priority in life but my level of misery was having a profound effect (again) on my ability to be present and enjoy time with my husband and daughter. Losing her made me realize the importance of harnessing what little inner strength I had left in order to make changes to be happier and to be present in my own life.
And I also had the realization, looking back, that I DID IT. That my life today is infinitely better than it was six months ago. I have supportive coworkers; I'm finding my niche at work; I have time for hobbies; I'm enjoying my time with Rose and Mike.
I felt as if my memory of Lucy came to me to remind of the inner strength and strong values that I have had all along, but which had gotten buried in the mess of those work situations. As I came to that realization, I also became aware that the refrain of the song being played during Pigeon pose was all about "forgiveness" -- I wept for losing Lucy, and I also wept for having come so close to losing myself in the misery that I felt back then. I hadn't wanted to believe that I had ended up in a second horrific work situation after just having extricated myself from the other one, so I had tried to convince myself that it wasn't true - and I needed to forgive myself to turning to denial for so long.
It took me the rest of the practice to stop crying. When I finally left the yoga studio, I realized I had smears of eye makeup all over the sleeve of my shirt from wiping my tears away.
And when I walked out of the gym toward my car, there was the most amazing full-sky rainbow. It struck me as the perfect metaphor - the beauty of the rainbow following the storm, just as my life feels beautiful after the unbearable pain of losing Lucy.
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| Miss you, Loose-ma-goose. |
As an aside:
Interestingly, as I did a quick web search for a photo to illustrate pigeon pose above, I came across all sorts of pages like this:
Four Reasons Pigeon Pose Makes you Cry
Emotions in Motion
Four Yoga Poses to Unlock Emotions
