Getting deep into it
It's been six months in Minnesota
If you’ve ever wanted to slow down time, might I suggest finding your way to a half-pigeon?
If you’ve never done a yoga before, half pigeon is a deep hip opener that comes somewhere around the 80-85% mark of class. It can mark the transition from the active, standing part of class into the seated, static stretching part of class. You can get there however you’d like but a cute little cheat code is to go from a downward facing dog, lift one leg into a three-legged dog, then use that space and momentum to bring your leg to the top of your mat, setting it down so that it’s parallel with the short edge of your mat with your back leg long behind you, and—here’s the really fun part—you bring the majority of your body weight to rest on top of it.
Right away, things get spicy. Emphasis on the deep part of “deep hip opener.” Depending on how you got here and any modifications you may have made, your chest is lifted and the bulk of your weight is on your hands, holding you up, not your hips. The next cue changes that: lower down to your elbows, maybe even your chest, laying your cheek to the mat.
The world shrinks down to the sensation in your hips, muscles oft overworked and overlooked: the hip flexors, the psoas, the piriformis, the glutes, and hamstrings. Put that aside for now and come back your breath, slow it down to the pace it was before things started to intensify.
Think of your inhales like a flashlight. You are shining it over the big, structural shapes, looking for the usual suspects, the places where you might be holding up and holding back: your shoulder, your neck, your back.
Think of your exhales like a Zippo lighter. You’re setting those little hairballs of tension and knotted muscle fiber ablaze.
At the start of this pose, all of your muscles are working in tandem to hold you in the shape that you arrived in. Your body is trying to protect you from sinking deeper and, subsequently, feeling things more intensely, so it’s locked in. It’s you against gravity.
Give up the fight.
Slowly, things start to melt. Your hips drop another inch.
This week marks six months in Minnesota, or, if you hadn’t already picked up on where this is going: one incredibly extended metaphorical half-pigeon.
With half-pigeon, there’s nowhere to hide.
In our everyday, if there’s something that feels uncomfortable—in our relationships with friends or partners or family, with work or in our bodies, when we’re grappling with a moral dilemma or our conscience—there are a million and one ways to sidestep that feeling. If it’s physical, pop a couple of ibuprofen and keep it moving. If it’s mental or emotional, you* can find a distraction in a Netflix show, a Tiktok, a task, a happy hour, a workout, complaining to another friend.
*by the use of you, I am obviously referring to myself
What we don’t often do is sit and be uncomfortable.
In half-pigeon, you voluntarily opt in to the discomfort. There is no fix, the only way out is through.
I only somewhat voluntarily opted into a life in Minnesota. What was just supposed to be a job for the summer has somehow turned into roommates and rent and winter clothes and working as a mechanic in a bike shop.
I’m bad at wrenching. I thought I was good at taking things apart and putting them back together, and I am, when those things can be more abstract and approximate rather than accurate and precise. Bikes are, surprisingly, very accurate and precise machines.
Every day, I remind myself: you know things. Not these things, sure, but other things. And you’re good at them. In some circles, you are an expert. Your ineptitude in this one circle does not define the remainder of your life’s circles.
The other day in the bike shop, someone thought that I was 38. Overly caffeinated and emotional vulnerable, the assumption hit me like a punch in the gut. There is nothing wrong with being 38. I am sure that, when I arrive at that age, there will be a new set of problems unique to being the age of 38. And yet, the thought of being 38 and being here—starting my life over, alone and at a bike shop in northern Minnesota—had me in a tizzy.
There’s a lot of tension there. And the only way out is through.
I’ve been saying this a lot these last six months. The only way out is through. Through a breakup over the summer, through quitting one job and scrambling to find another, through rejection and creative stagnation, through the decision to stay in Minnesota, through starting a new job, through missing family and friends and community, through ineptitude and changing seasons and shortening days.
Each week, it gets easier. Each week, a new skill unlocked at the bike shop. Each week, something like friendships begin to emerge. Each week, one week closer to summer. Each week, a little less tension.
Our hips are wildly important. For walking, for bending and straightening, for holding ourselves up; quite literally they are the hinge that our movements rely on. They’re also believed to be where we store unprocessed emotions—tension and memories and stored energy from past and current experiences—due to the tightening of our psoas muscle under stress. Even when the stress passes, the limited mobility remains.
There’s this moment, when the magic of half-pigeon really starts to kick in, where my hips that have currently been hovering 3-4 inches off the mat, seemingly unable to go any further will suddenly and inexplicably drop another few inches.
In therapy, we’ve been talking about ease versus effort. I am good at effort. I know what it means to be stubborn, to dig your heels in and grit your teeth and white knuckle your way clumsily through. What I lack in any sort of talent or skill or finesse, I make up for in sheer determination.
My task lately has been to notice where there is ease.
There’s an ease to half-pigeon, if only you just stop fighting. Gravity being what it is, your body is meant to sink. The tension comes from holding yourself up, holding yourself back.
There isn’t much ease to starting over, starting again, starting somewhere new, but there can be a little less tension when you lean into the discomfort.
Friends, as always, thanks for being here! I know this might be a different than what you’re used to if you found your way here from my Good Letters newsletters and I appreciate you sticking around for the transition.
While there’s just a few more weeks to shop holiday cards before Christmas, I’d like to remind you that a Good Letters holiday card is meant to be timeless and last all winter long. And if you missed the deadline for a custom denim jacket, there are some pre-made jackets floating around over on Instagram.