Anatomy and Asana: I Love Anatomy Ezine
www.anatomyandasana.com
By: Susi Hately Aldous

Finding Stability Amidst Emotional Chaos

Three weeks ago, I had the unfortunate experience of my twin sister passing away. It was an unexpected and rather sudden death, and all of me has been quite shocked. My body has moved through various stages of tension, release, grabbing, holding, stuckness, and tightness; and my breath, not surprisingly, has oscillated between being thin, supportive, sort of full, heaving, expansive, shallow, and held.

Grief is a strange animal indeed. Like any emotion, how it moves through the body and psyche is unique to each individual, directed, in part, by the level of support that comes from within and from outside.

Anatomy and Grief

I have always loved anatomy as a vehicle to study yoga, both as an “asana practice on the mat” and as a “structure for living off the mat.” Our anatomy is our posture – not only in Tadasana and Trikonasana but also in how we stand when we are in line for the bank machine or grocery checkout; it is our movement – in and out of asanas and through vinyasas, as well as how we walk, run, ski, surf; it is our emotions – collapsed forward with sadness or depression, struggling to take in a pranayama practice, as well as the heaviness that keeps us in bed, sheets and pillows protecting, nurturing, and containing.

This experience of grief has made me so aware of how my body is holding, how my breath is flowing, and how my internal stability is partially dictating how I am doing – mentally, emotionally, and physically. Life is uncertain, events are sometimes spontaneous, and at times so much feels beyond our control.

So the question becomes, where does internal stability come from in times of emotional chaos? From my experience over the past 3 weeks, as difficult as it seems to connect with, its place of origin is no different than when not in emotional chaos.

Let's take a look:

Internal stability is created from lines of force. Here, we'll look at two groups:

1. There is one deep line (the vertical line) that begins at the bottom of the feet, carries up through the hip adductors, into the pelvic floor, and into the transversus abdominis, which connects to the multifidi as well as (via the diaphragm) to the stabilizers of the shoulder girdle. At its essence, this line connects the bottom of the feet to the base of the skull, and when active, it gives you the feeling of rooting into the earth while simultaneously being pulled up to the sky.

2. A second line holds the pelvis and sacroiliac joints stable by connecting the hip abductors on one side with the hip adductors on the other.

Together, the actions of these lines – the horizontal force at the pelvis plus the vertical force from feet to skull – enable you to fill out the shape that you are.

It seems so easy, doesn't it?

The problem when in chaos is that the strain is greater, the challenge is greater, and connecting can be much more difficult. With the tendency for the breath to be shallow or weakened (the emotion of grief tends to be held in the lungs and chest), it just seems easier to collapse under the pressure.

So what to do?

Like someone who is learning to re-engage his or her core, I've sought support and props from outside myself to help me re-engage mine. And like I teach my students, I've toned down extraneous activities so that I can move at a pace that enables me to be aware, to easily breathe, exploring the sensations that arise, letting them guide me, advising me how much is enough and then listening to them. My experience is that as I follow the sensations within, the rawness is fading, the sadness is dissipating, and I am becoming stronger, more aware, and more stable.

Here's to exploring, in the times of ease and in the times of struggle.