We've all come here carrying something. What's your burden? Where are you gripping? What holds you down, or back (fear, external coping skills, stories)? We are all creators: our bodies and brains are under constant regeneration: what we are repeating or have repeated or have witnessed has released certain neurotransmitters in our brain, which lays down a pathway and the pathway will repeat itself. The body repeats its own movements, in tension, in lack of breath, in immunity shut down, in hormonal imbalance and fatigue, in digestive distress, cravings, and brain fog. Looking at my own practice/life and working to dissolve those samskaras. In body, in thought. Going to play with dissolving those tension lines in our asana tonight and tomorrow. Practice softening to take on the things we really want. There are physiological reasons why we crave, shut down, feel anxious or depressed when faced with something new or challenging or the very idea of letting go.  The psoas muscle grips, which is the thing that would allow us to run away or to curl into fetal position, contracts.  It ripples across the diaphragm, conflicting and complicating our breath.  It brushes up against our GI tract and constricts the flow there.  When the pelvic diaphragm and digestive/reproductive/elimination areas are constricted, waste management is obscured.  Which leaves us more toxic and less able to take nourishment even if nourishment comes in our mouths.  The circulation and lymphatic areas there are compromised.  Further, the vast majority of our serotonin levels is produced and circulated from the gut.  Serotonin is the hormone of satiation, satisfaction, sighing with being content.  If we compromise that, we we literally be unable to feel soothed, let alone okay, so we will rush for cigarettes, alcohol, sex, spending, sugar, naps, approval.

If we can physically touch and relieve those areas, our capacity to find our self center and our self soothing will get back on track.

Last night I asked students to remember and recall what they came for - to tap into their longing, their core strength, their center.  Tonight I'm suggesting that we cannot really tap that center (which is literally the core meridian line of the body, our core strength) until we can dissolve the gripping at the edges, the front and back superficial meridian lines.  We cannot take up those things we long for, the things we crave, our truth, until we let go of the things holding us back.

Metaphor and anatomy, both.  Your body is your poem and your destiny.