Whatever our inner emotional state going into December, the commotion around us hits a fever pitch in the city. Crowds swell. Quiet fades. Advertising encroaches. Needs, desires, hopes, and wishes charge the air with an emotional electricity. It's a frenetic energy fed by the alternating current of social conditioning and commercial marketing. If we don't take care of ourselves, holiday expectations can exhort us and extort us until eventually we're spent.
Masquerading as a pleasant distraction, this holiday programming can cause spiritual static and emotional distortion. The emphasis on outward fulfillment, happiness, perfection, and excess can raise specters of anxiety, disappointment, guilt, and want. This irony isn't lost on brain scientists, who annually serve up a feast of research suggesting that the happiest time of the year often isn't.
Luckily our practice can help. Giving ourselves time to breathe and stretch every day can help us break through the commercial messaging, turn our focus inward, check in with our feelings, embrace our circumstances, find our balance, and manage our stress and expectations. The end of another year naturally brings mixed feelings and anxious energy. There's so much to do and so much that will inevitably be left undone. There's so much to share and celebrate. And sometimes there are matters to release and mourn. It's a lot to process, but with yoga we need not sort it out alone. When we practice, we find union with ourselves and with each other. Reaffirmed by this togetherness, we can channel our year-end energy without giving into seasonal madness. Rebalanced, we can find calm within the churning crowd. Relieved, we can shrug off suffocating expectations. Reminded, we can love ourselves and each other as we are right now.
The pose of the month for December is camatkarasana, which translates literally as "the ecstatic unfolding of the enraptured heart." I call it starfish and chose it because it reminds me of the sacred star shape that appears across traditions at this time of year, the symbol of a light that comes from the heavens yet shines from within. Like ustrasana, camel pose, which we celebrated in November, starfish is a heart-opener and a heart-offering. It challenges us to move from our center, to balance outward from our core, to express ourselves freely, and to share our heart-light with the world.
My wish for the holidays is that camatkarasana offers everyone in the TogetherYoga community nothing less than its namesake, that it brings forth in all of us an ecstatic unfolding of our enraptured hearts--and that we find our hearts enraptured not because of sales and gifts and trips and parties, but because we exist, individually and together.
We will practice starfish in class this month, but here's how to find your way into the pose on your own. First, move into a downward dog after a good warm-up sequence. It's important that your muscles have built up some heat and that your back is ready to arch. From downward dog, bring your right knee to your left elbow. Shift your weight onto your right arm as you slide your right leg under your left. Release your left hand from the ground and raise it into the air, lifting your chest and hips as your weight moves onto your left leg. Keep lifting your hips and arching your back as you open your chest to the sky. Imagine your heart beaming its light up at the ceiling. Allow your chin to lift as you lengthen your spine from your shoulders to your hips. Keep reaching out with your left arm to open the muscles that envelop your ribs. Hang there for a few moments and let your heart just shine.