No Tricks · 15 February 2009

Let’s say Sherilyn Fenn is god. And the cherry stem she ties in a neat little knot using an inscrutable play of the tongue—the cherry stem is some particular human folded impossibly over and through in to purna matsyendrasana. The full maht-see. A supple knotted plaything hidden in the mouth of god.

Not everyone is a stem though. I’d always thought the full, prop-free matsyendra was for these ropy, worked-over guys. Leggy ectomorphs from the outset, beat and pulled and warmed over in to nice fruit leather from years upon years of the practice.

I’m not a fruit stem. Rather: soft not sinewy, with open but tweakable joints and legs so short my feet run right into my head in a forward bend. The distance from my bottom ribs to the crests of the ilium is... between two and three inches. Just not much length to tie up.

So I never expected to take the full expression of the matsyendra, with non-lotus heel firmly hooked on the outer quadricep and that foot fully grounded, the top-leg ischcial tuberosity equally pressing the ground, and the twisting arm torqued all the way out to a bind at the big toe while the other palm, its arm snaked around the back, rests easily on the inner thigh.

Ok that paragraph makes no sense. And besides I always feel somehow vulgar breaking these things down. For the kids playing along at home… don’t. It’s more or less Marichysana D on crack, with the added benefits of an assault on the inner meniscus, the possibility of snapping your arm off, and a “massage” of the liver and stomach so powerful that any sketchy food or drink you’ve so much as gazed upon the past 24 hours will be instantly and mercilessly recalled.

I’ve been practicing purna m for a year or something, with all the “benefits” listed above and a receeding wave of post-posture sponge syndrome (the gasp of relief a sponge takes when you stop wringing it), but without ever expecting the full expression. Taking it as an asymptotic function, because once I fold in the full position it’s impossible to also stay grounded. I just list over toward the up-knee hip and tumble into a mess of small limbs.

But then the other day, there was a sage ambush. Mmm? There were some misgivings about the arrival of the full expression because I felt tricked. There are no tricks to getting this maneuv, unless it's: “choose a major body hinge, and break it.” There is no purna matsyendrasana workshop or teacher who can give you the keys. You just fucking practice and let it be.

But… the ambush makes sense now. I’ve been teasing apart bits of hip flexor and lats, learning to let the liver be pushed around, finding a kind of balance from letting go in strange small places while pushing strongly in small others. The matsy, in my body, is something about being simulatenously the action and its reaction—until I cancel out the wobbles and become suspended for a few moments in space. The metaphor for union of opposition is obnoxious but inescapable: I bet RF has a field day with this one.

But… it’s still asymptotic. You have to breathe, have to let cells die and regenerate even as the pretzel locks in to place, have to realize there with the heel in the gut how many ways the body is still always in flux. The full expression is nice, but not something so new. A tiny difference; and now that I’m in it, I can still scarcely pin it down.

Posted by (0v0)        
Categories: astanga yoga , having a body

Comment

1. Oof! SO remarkable, how you can pin this down in writing. But it’s still asymptotic! LOL!

   Magical.

   And Twin Peaks?! You’re killing me! :-)

   Posted by: karen · Feb 16, 04:40 AM · #

2. I haven’t even finished this yet; the first line was so, SO very good.

   “Let’s say Sherilyn Fenn is god.” I had to pause right there and write this.

   Posted by: patrick · Feb 16, 06:31 AM · #

3. Ok, as with many people, I love it when you write asana. That paragraph made perfect sense, but I think your distaste for writing asana porn makes it nonsense, OR, actually, I suspect that your experience of a pose is so little related to the mechanics that even when you’re accurate mechanically in description, you’ve missed the pose’s “reality” (now THAT is asymptotic).

   Of COURSE I’ve tried on the full MatC before; who wouldn’t? It IS MariD on crack, and for me it’s more balance than anything else; sit bone comes up, and KERFUFFLE, you’re a pile of limbs on the floor. Exactly.

   So: do you stick it, or does it stick you? (evil laughter)

   Posted by: patrick · Feb 16, 06:41 AM · #

4. And so…finally…we realise the sweet, almost sickly re-ality…the underlying nectar…of the fish within the king…

   and the king within the fish

   which truly implies the deep, almost, almost connective, matricular…circumular relationship between the primordial pescatorial and…the regal or ‘raha-ja’ nature..

   which is complete in its efferfluvial, trisul stabbed forms.

   It may take many

   many

   many years of prac-tice…

   And a sense of humour.

   Posted by: meniscusmerangue · Feb 16, 08:33 AM · #

5. Sherilyn Fenn is god.

   Cherries seem to most of us always to have stems attached to them until the moment of consumption. But stone fruits possess a sort of magic that allows them to hang from their stems on the tree even during perfect ripeness, such that we can place our hands directly underneath them, and nestle them ever so gently, and all on their own they let go of that final bit of holding on and come into our hands. And from that place there, out at arm’s reach, recently off the stem, as we bring them to our mouths, they emanate to us the warmth they collected under the sun, and they press through their skin, and through our own, the feeling of softness and barely contained succulence, and they sort of tell us to bring them directly to our mouths, forthwith, none of that cleansing nonsense required.

   I don’t recall much about the woody stems.

   Posted by: Carl · Feb 16, 11:01 AM · #

6. Tridents for the last days of Aquarius on the cusp of the Fish…

   Yes, I guess we could say the writing it is an asymptotic function. Though metaphorically speaking, metaphors themselves are more trend-lines than functions. What matters is the correctness-of-fit.

   Meanwhile…. Carl? Is that you? This matter of stone fruits is beautiful and more erotic than I intended. But I suppose that’s what Sherilyn brings.

   Posted by: (0v0) · Feb 16, 07:19 PM · #

7. The trend-lines are selling nearly as well as the t-shirts, so i’m told.

   Posted by: meniscusmerangue · Feb 17, 02:05 AM · #

8. This was fun to read! I’ve never tried the posture, and probably won’t unless I get there in my practice- I’m not highly motivated like that. ha ha! I would rather practice by you and have the Owl dristi! (hoping you wouldn’t mind for just one practice?)

   Posted by: Liz · Feb 17, 09:21 AM · #

9. Hmm…. we’ll have to talk about that Liz. Heh heh heh.

   Meanwhile, king-fishers.

   Posted by: (0v0) · Feb 18, 08:11 PM · #

10. Wow.

    Posted by: Carl · Feb 19, 09:56 AM · #

11. Apparently, kingfishers are difficult to photograph for a variety of reasons

    Posted by: Carl · Feb 19, 10:42 AM · #

12. Carl, bird photographer.

    Posted by: (0v0) · Feb 19, 05:16 PM · #

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