(Note to reader – I wrote this at the end of March, just before Easter, but my fellow Mother Rising crew voted I post it and share even if Estara’s official season has past. Hope you enjoy!)
There are so many layers of discovery that our lives hold. Everything from whom we meet or interact with to what we uncover in our dreams. I have been seriously putting off honoring the intense exploration that is long over due inside the depths of my hips. And my hips seemed to call me from the story of the Goddess Estara who turned an injured baby bird one spring into a hare so that she might better survive the winter in future seasons. I embrace the hippity hop of that bunny and go into my hips. (I want to digress and have you also look at the root of the word Estara and remind you of it’s connection to Easter and to Estrus, our menstrual cycle. Just something cool to note on the side. Estara’s hold on reproduction and fecundity if something powerful.)
Having done yoga since college at UCSC, I go in phases of a more active and less active practice. However, since my pregnancy with my first child, I have regularly attended a yoga class weekly and have incorporated at various points a personal practice at home depending on my schedule. For a while I was determined to solve a shoulder and neck issue and spent serious dedicated time in addressing that. When I was in my ex-husband’s house with the children and we were married, I had a morning practice that was devoted to my right hip, but by nature of the situation being unsettling and with the inability to truly relax and go deep in the poses in that environment, I couldn’t heal what was happening.
So after a class last week where the teacher told me she had lost inches on the outside of her hips just by going deeper into them internally, I was TOTALLY on board. I mean who doesn’t want to lose some inches around those hips. In fact, I even pulled out my sewing measuring tape so I could measure if indeed her assertion was to hold true. You’ll have to stick around to know as my efforts progress.
I was also going on the fact that anything can shift or change in 3-5 days substantially enough to make me want to commit more time. I learned that from sleep training my kids. It seemed like after 3 days, I could take out a feeding, or if not 3 at least in 5. It was always surprisingly quicker than I thought. I am on day 6 now and I can tell you that there is a LOT more freedom in those hips.
I had one friend ask me, “So tell me, do you have any emotional release that comes up when you are going deep in your hips?” My response was clearly emotional…feeling like punching them, “ What do you !@#! think? Um…yeah.” Recalling my first yoga classes and emotional release. I was in triangle pose or utthita trikonasana. There was a fury of anger that wanted to bust out of me. I was always furious in that pose. I never wanted to do it, but I remember Julie, my teacher, saying that if there is one pose you do everyday, maybe consider utthita trikonasana. My hips have some anger, but they also hold their share of deep weepy sadness. 2 days into my routine, I had waves of tears coming up to greet me with no apparent other life circumstance, which is pretty phenomenal considering my past year, to warrant them.
I am spending a good 1-2 hours before bed going from one hip opener pose to another. I go to sleep feeling this deep open spacious softness in my belly. A warmth, like a pool of beautiful soft relaxed fleshiness. In the morning I stretch again in my attempt to repattern the muscles into a healthy behavior. I can feel my abdominal muscles engaging in tilting my pelvis forward and holding my sacrum in a different way.
My dreams are of noses and scuba diving (seriously…not joking). I am sniffing something emotional in the depths of me out. Uncovering a sunken treasure of sorts…I can feel it. We have our regular lives and we are here coming together at the Mother Rising to work on moving through them with grace and deep learning and then there is the moment when we realize we have to commit to another deeper change to move things. My hips are my current space of deep learning. Let’s see how many inches of deep learning I can unpeel.
keeping my measuring tape close by at all times,
Margaret
