Skinny Dipping: When not having a plan is the plan

Anu bhavana (with becoming): being with your direct experience as things come together, copulate, transmute (i.e. heat, light, color) or coalesce the senses.

Sometimes I like to teach yoga naked…“themeless” that is;) As you might imagine, flashing a class can be daunting, especially for a compulsive theme-addict like myself. I admit it. I like to have a plan. Really, is that so bad? Planning does work well most of the time. So, why then step out and expose myself?

Well, maybe you can relate. You prepare. You study. You edit. You hold back until you know just one more fact, find just the right time/person(s) or learn one more technique. In your quest for perfection, amid a cacophony of relentless self monitoring and theorizing, you one day awake to find you are the “who” standing in your own way. Analysis paralysis. You haven’t perfected a darn thing. And all the while, tick-tock, possibility after possibility passes you by.

Or, perhaps you do act, even brilliantly but on auto pilot. I’ve noticed this as I’ve watched some business leaders or top athletes. Flawless. Buttoned up. Measured. Practiced. They’ve got an answer for everything. Yet they don’t risk much and they don’t give/get much either. Knock-knock, anybody in there? All technique. No heart.

So every now and again I leave my notebook (a.k.a. security binky) at home. No plan. No theme (…gasp). You pick your favorite asanas and together we co-create our class letting a theme emerge (or not.) We practice opening to whatever is being offered right then and there, letting go, trusting, playing and even making a mess on our mats.

In other words, we practice making mud balls. In the delightfully fun book Life is a Verb Patti Digh wrote a chapter entitled polish your mud balls. (note: I tried to weave the excerpt I read aloud into this post:) In it she shares a metaphor about pottery students who were graded an A for either quantity (50 lbs of pots) or quality (one perfect pot.) Which group do you think produced the highest quality pots? You guessed it, the group tasked with quantity. Instead of hypothesizing, they jumped in and submersed themselves in that wonderfully meditative current of direct experience (anu bhavana), churning out piles of work and continuously learning from their mistakes.

So what happens in a yoga class when not having a plan is the plan?

• Sometimes not much. No theme emerges. It's just one more pot (class.)

• Other times a pot (theme) beyond your wildest imagination appears.

Dare I put in writing, cow butt, which has snuck its way into becoming our class moniker for the expanding spiral of the upper inner thighs that blossoms your toosh. When I suggested to the terrific women of Wisconsin, “stick out your booty like J.Lo.” they responded, “Oh, you mean like a cow?” Well ok, yes, that works too, like a cow. The rest is history. This theme has taken on a life of its own!

• And then when you least expect it out comes the perfect pot.

In one class as we moved from Robin’s favorite pose of squat (malasana) to Tom’s perennial pick crow (bakasana) into another side arm balance...voila! The perfect theme surfaced: love is stronger than fear.

Arm balances are great teachers. All too often we let fear take the lead as we enter the pose. It riddles our hands with uncertainty, makes us doubt and look outside of ourselves for confirmation, or already has us conjuring up an escape plan before we’ve even started.

Similarly from time to time off our mats we may (well) freak-out when faced with circumstances that rattle us, wake us up, expose our insecurities, whether it’s dating, trying a new hobby, love or ever changing job responsibilities.

When fear is in charge, someone always gets hurt.

So as an alternative you practiced leaning into the uncertainty of an arm balance with love not fear. You confidently placed your hands on the mat, stayed true to yourself with honest alignment, and found chaturaunga (low push up), a pose you’ve worked on and perfected. Next you softened your heart and unabashedly let the energy flow. It truly was awesome to watch. If your legs took flight, fantastic…if not, who cared, you were practicing something much more useful off the mat, trusting yourself to whole heartedly align with the current streaming through you and open to the here and now.

What happened when you applied our spontaneous theme to handstand?

Progress and high fives. Instead of kicking up with a crazy leg flailing with fear you infused it with your love for anything from ice cream to your children. And WOOO-HOOO, Barbara kicked up into handstand without any assistance, something she has been working on for years!! Yea!

In closing...

Dive into the fullness of the moment with a heroic heart (vikrama).

Make a choice. Doing nothing is doing something. The opening of the Bhagavad Gita is a good reminder of this centuries old quandary. Lord Krishna asks the warrior Arjuna to consider whether or not he is breaking the promise of yoga by not taking the action of stepping onto the battle field. The field he faced was filled with contradictions, obstacles and no possibility of a perfect outcome; his family members were on the opposing side.

At some point all of us must step onto a similar playing field– whether the starting line of a race, a stage, a board room, or hovering over your phone as you’re about to send “that” text - any moment where you find yourself standing naked at the midline between your deepest vulnerabilities and greatest triumphs, between the agony of heart break and the thrill of fulfilling your deepest desire.

And so we practiced on our mats, not just the diving but also the swimming that follows. We sought out that moment after you jump when you realize omg, now what? You are out in the open and vulnerable. Do you grab a fig leaf for cover? Allow yourself to be paralyzed by the possibility of failure? Or do you lean forward into that current (anu bhavana) where things come together, transmute and coalesce and instead ride the wave that’s right there in the moment? Love the rhythm. Honor it. Welcome the people who enter the flow. Cracks and all. And instead of perfection, splash, fiddle around, revel in the ambiguity.

My wish for each of you as we left our mats was that you take the risk of exposing yourself (figuratively and legally, of course!) and then in the moments that follow, you trust. You have done the hard work. I see it each week when you practice on your mat. You already have all that you need. And you don’t have to go anywhere, the time is always now. This current is forever flowing. You do not need to wait for the perfect confluence of events for a little skinny dipping.

To co participating versus orchestrating, to aligning rather than designing and above all to trusting that love is stronger than fear, Namaste!

P.S. In a blog post about spontaneous themes and baring it all, I’d be remiss if I did not mention one of the best observations ever. Sue noted, “Ed is going strapless to show off his back cleavage in mer-man!” Guess I’m not the only one who likes to go rogue on the mat.