Wildness Preserve

Every Sunday weather permitting, my husband and I try to include a walk, a hike or a run, an outdoor excursion as part of our weekend.  Last weekend we were upstate and decided to explore a hiking trail that was new to us.  We got to the beginning of the trail, looked at the map to get the direction of the trail, figured out what trail signs to follow and off we went.

Except it was unlike any hike we had done so far .  Usually there is a general path laid out to follow, a path most travelled, a clearing of sorts that is visible.  Not here.  The trail was a steep climb up a mountain without a real path other than trail marks seemingly suggesting  ‘you want to go this way, but how you get here is entirely up to you’.

After a few steps of trying to walk up this trail, very quickly I found myself using not just my feet but also my hands.  Stepping one foot here and another foot there, then with one hand grabbing one branch here while with the other hand holding onto another rock there. After 20 minutes of this, it occurred to me that I was not walking up this mountain but crawling up using all four limbs.

As I considered that, that if I wanted to get up this mountain I would have to use all four limbs, images of deers and bears having walked up that mountain with grace and agility flashed through my mind.  It would be their example we would have to follow. 

Often you reach the end of a hike or at certain junctions along the hike where you come upon an opening, a clearing of sorts where you are afforded an amazing view, a view that expands your perspective.  I looked up towards this mountain, still on all fours, and it was as if the mountain took this stance of “Hey if you want to gain the perspective I have to offer, if you want to reach it, you are going to have to reach it through the perspective of being on all four limbs.”

Further:

– In the practice of Yoga Asana, we are also frequently invited to reach a different perspective.  A perspective that at times can only be reached being on our hands and feet, a perspective of often even using our hands as our feet.

– Its not the perspective of sitting on a bike and spinning the wheels or the perspective of climbing a treadmill/elyptical machine or the perspective of getting on row machine.

– The practice of yoga tries to take us beyond just the human perspective into the wilderness that lies beyond just being “human”.

– Human evolution, often defined in part by the evolution into a two legged creature, has also with that involved the raising of the brain/ the mind structurally above the heart, some would say with the mind governing over the heart.  Yoga postures frequently try to take us into the experience where that relationship is shifted, where at times the heart is physically at level with the mind and other times raised above the mind.

– The experience we often have of feeling more whole and complete after the practices of Yoga, can perhaps be attributed to this shift in perspective afforded by structural shifts in how we align ourselves, by which we also feel more adaptable and less resistant to our surroundings.