Practice. Practice. Practice.

Camel Pose:

My nemesis. When I am at yoga class, this is the pose that freaks me out.

Chaturanga? No problem. I love to move through sun salutations, starting in child's pose, my nose on my pink yoga mat, forehead to the floor, arms resting in front of me and pulling the knots out of my upper back. I move to table top, with knees bent, arms in front of me, everything in right angles, and into the first down dog of the practice. Our bodies pike in the air, hips raised, heels pressing to the floor, weight balancing between our legs and outstretched arms, evenly balanced between each of our fingers, spread wide, and the thumb. The instructor instructs us to breath and we do. Air fills lungs simultaneously before pushing through bodies and back out into the room.

From down dog, we step to the top of our mats, rise to flat back, foreheads reaching to the front of the room and backs flattening out along the spine. We tuck back down again and let our arms hang to our feet before tadasana, mountain pose. Our arms move in a circle to raise overhead as we inhale and look up, fixing our eyes on a point in front of us and slightly higher than eye level. Arms completely extended, we exhale and swan dive back to the floor, putting our hands on the ground as we step back in a straight plank before lowering down in a push-up, chaturanga, with arms bent to a ninety degree angle, tops of our feet on the ground, and then inhale as we move to up-dog, tops of feet on the ground, lower half of body straight, shoulders pushing back from our ears down our spine, and chest, neck, and head lifted. Eyes look up or are closed. Lungs pull in the air from the class. On the exhale, we move back into down-dog, toes flipping under, body piking, heels shooting back into the floor.

It all feels so good.

My body and breath work together. I know I will be stiff for the first two or three sun salutations but that I will get stronger, looser, more flexible. Each movement demands my happy concentration, my strong breath, my comfortable faith in the practice. Muscles heat with the effort. Knots loosen in my back.

This is my practice four years into my yoga hobby. So serene. So healthy.

Five years ago I tried to do yoga. I couldn't.

I was too bored. Too fidgety. Too restless. I wanted to do more exciting things, like run stairs and make my muscles hurt. Or twitch and jerk to the hip-hop beats of a dance class. I couldn't calm myself enough to slowly move through a practice. I didn't understand the point.

But my practice now is not without hiccups. There is still the dreaded camel pose.

I don't know what it is, but this pose creates such a strong sense of anxiety in me that I dread it every class.

The pose goes like this: you kneel tall on your mat and put your hands on your kidneys against the small of your back, then you walk your eyes along the ceiling as you look backwards at the wall behind you. Ultimately you release your hands from your back and put them on your heels.

The whole thing wigs me out. I feel so uncomfortable the whole time, or rather from the moment my head goes past the spot of looking directly up. Anything behind that vertical planes scares my body. I feel the anxiety well in my chest, down my neck, into my head. Panic flares. I start counting to ten rapidly. I forget to breathe. I quit the pose after 15 seconds and take a break, looking straight ahead while others in my class continue the pose.

I dread Camel.

What's interesting is that my instructors tend to say things during this pose like "This is a heart-opener, so it may cause you feel some discomfort. Feel the emotions that come up during this pose and then allow yourself to release them."

Having heard this so many times and having felt so anxious during the pose, I looked up Camel on the internet. I learned it opens up three chakras, or energy centers in the body, the root chakra, naval chakra, and heart chakra. The heart chakra, not surprisingly, is the center for love, compassion, and forgiveness.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised I have a hard time opening up my heart.

What would it take to open my heart?

In my last yoga practice, I felt anxiety when the instructor announced Camel pose, but then I decided to change my attitude. "I love this," I thought, "it's giving me a chance to practice a pose that's hard. What a great opportunity!" Of course I was half lying to myself, but also half allowing myself to change my attitude. I decided not to be fearful during the pose, to allow myself to be happy about however far I made it in the pose, to take a break if I needed to but feel joyful that I tried the pose.

I like this concept of working the body to open the heart.

Working the emotional part of myself to open my heart is a little trickier. I've been trying to be more pro-active about dating. Signing up for internets dating sites, going out for happy hours, trying out new possibilities, buying new "date" outfits. But I'm not sure that I'm really opening my heart during these outings. I feel like I'm going through the actions, but I don't know that I'm really open to romance at this point. I keep the walls up pretty well.

It's sort of a strange paradox where I complain about how nothing is working out, but I also am keeping every potential romance at arm's length. I don't even know that I'm doing it consciously. It's more like a subliminal red light preventing me from really plunging into a new relationship.

And I'm not sure how to change this. The emotional part, I mean.

I think the key is in yoga. For me, at least. I think if I keep working the physical body, the emotion will catch up. If I keep forgiving myself for my half-Camels, like I do when I cheat and go to my knees during Chaturanga, or when I am less flexible or strong for other poses, and if I can keep being open to that vulnerability, that exposure that comes from opening my chest and leaning back over my toes, I think the emotional part of my being will become more compassionate as well. I think I will be able to forgive the painful experiences of my past, the betrayals, the hurtful actions. I think I will be able to find love more easily, to feel more secure, to realize that opening a heart doesn't mean giving up control.

Like so many parts of my recovery, it is not knowing how that moves me forward. It is the desire to be healed.