Sometimes when I open a yoga magazine and see someone in a pose with each of their five toes on each foot spread like budding flowers, I feel both intimidated and a slight bit jealous. How do they do that? Even my younger sister, who has done just a small amount of yoga practice, is fully alive in her pinky toes. My new baby nephews seem to be able to widen each toe apart, as if they were individual fingers, ready to grasp a strand of hair or a dangling earring. In fact, when I look at these babies, there seems to be no holding back whatsoever. Everything is blooming and waking up, alive and wiggly. Which brings me to my own little toe. Just the one, on my right foot. The one that seems permanently glued to my fourth toe. As I come into poses like Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward Facing Dog) my eyes tend to move toward my right little toe. I can’t help it. I want to see if anything has changed. I want to understand the blockages. Are they related to my spine, my sinuses, my ears, or my right shoulder as in reflexology? Is my little toe simply asleep? I want to see the awakening. I wish for it, push for it, inwardly cry out for it-- Come on! Come On! Show me your stuff! Which is exactly why my little toe does nothing. It will not be coerced into doing what I want it to do. It needs respect.
I have become so consumed with my little toe and what it can’t do in yoga that it has become a point of contention, of judgment upon me as both a yogini and a person. That is how the inner critic works. She does her best to tell you all the things that are wrong with you, both from the smallest infraction to the essence of your whole being. When I get to the yoga mat, I am sometimes nervous that the bulk of my practice will be on trying to keep my focus on my breath, on my compassionate experience of this marvelous gift of yoga, while at the same time AVOIDING any attention to my little toe. Avoidance takes just as much energy as obsession.
There have been moments, brief moments, when the little toe has inexplicably separated from the fourth toe when I “wasn’t looking,” as it were. But it always seemed the second there was an opening, I added a whole level of expectation around this toe to stay energized and conscious.
I have realized that I have a judgment about myself around consciousness. If my littlest toe cannot become conscious at least the way I think it is supposed to be, then on some cosmic scale I must have a limited view of consciousness. Whew! What a lot to carry in my heart. And what a lot of pressure for my little toe. After all, my little toe may be completely conscious, teaching the rest of me a much-needed life lesson about patience, trust and acceptance. I also believe that my story on the yoga mat has many more layers to it, layers that have to do with a world reflected in my own life and mine in the world.
Over the years I have studied a lot of Anusara Yoga. In this practice there is much emphasis on the toes. I have only felt loving compassion from the practice itself. It seems to celebrate the awakenings and shifts. I once heard John Friend, the founder of Anusara Yoga, say he did a whole workshop on the fourth toe alone. Oh, don’t even talk to me about the fourth toe. That is another article all together. I inhaled his teachings, fusing them with my own mixed bag of past experience and somehow it still comes out with some self-criticism. And now, I must admit, some humor.
This is where the real edge of learning can take place. Just writing about this toe, admitting the narrow focus I can get into when I come to the mat, is helping me to lighten up, just a bit. Many times in my yoga practice I have been able to do things I thought I couldn’t do because I simply suspended my judgment about them and acted innocently, with a sense of wide-eyed enthusiasm. The mind is a very powerful tool in the body, but the heart is more powerful. If the heart stays open and has hope, the body will trust it. I need to take this principle with much love to my littlest toe. If she never extends fully, on her own, can I accept that with an open and respectful heart?
I am grateful for the lessons this toe is teaching me. There are so many parallels in my life around expectation and judgment of my own body, my own abilities. There is a reason for me to write about this. All of us have edges in our yoga practice. All of us have “stuff” that we obsess about. All of us become critical of parts of ourselves- a body part, a belief, a career, even a life. In the end it is all the same. This awareness I am having is another layer of my yogic experience around my right to just BE.
Recently I spoke with a friend who just graduated from a yoga teacher training program. She admitted to me that she didn’t think she could teach yoga because she could not get her heels to the floor in downward dog. It broke my heart to hear her say that. And how often I have thought it myself, about my little toe. On some level I must be breaking my own heart.
So I invite and encourage all of us to be open-hearted, feeling the depths of our yoga experience, suspending judgment, if just for a moment. I invite all of us to have moments of being, when the world is full of possibility and magic. I invite all of us, including myself, to BE LOVE in our thoughts and in our practice. This is yoga.
Marsha T Metzger, RYT 500, KYTA, M.ed is a Kripalu certified yoga instructor and Kripalu Danskinetics® instructor. She is completing her studies in Body-Centered Process Movement Therapy. She is the creator of Color-Me Yoga® for Children, Christ-Centered Yoga Teacher Training, and Chakra Yoga Teacher Training. She is also a children’s book author and is presently working on a book about Yoga, God and Healing--Letting Go into the Vastness of God ©2005
Link: www.yogaom.com
