Let’s start in a forward fold at the top of our mats today.
And let’s just shake things out a little, get used to this new heightened sensitivity, and open yourself up to it. Allow each tiny criticism or rejection you experience today to fully penetrate your chakras.
You don’t need to pay attention to anyone else in the room, or in your life. Today’s practice, and, honestly, everything else for the next few weeks, is all about you and your sacrum.
Find a rhythm in your breath, in and out, that will fuel the extreme vacillations in your mood during your practice. On the inhale, fill yourself with hope and possibility: You can hook up with literally anyone you want now. You can stop wearing eyeliner to bed. You don’t have to clean up that loser’s gross beard shavings from the sink ever again.
On the exhale, let your thoughts wander to the fact that your cousin’s wedding is in a month; are you supposed to tell them that you’re not bringing a plus-one anymore, or what?
Spread the flesh of each buttock to the side and slowly move through a memory of when the two of you were happy, maybe that one Sunday when you were supposed to meet friends for brunch but instead you stayed in bed all afternoon, laughing and kissing and doing impressions of the cast of “Grey’s Anatomy” as babies. After completing a yogic toe lock, let that image flow into the way he avoided eye contact while telling you that “it just seems like you never want to do anything except get Seamless and watch ‘The X-Files’ ” the morning after you refused to go to his roommate’s 1 A.M. d.j. set in Queens.
At your own pace, replay these memories a few times. For an optional variation, you can try one vinyasa while smelling the T-shirt that he left at your apartment and that still carries the scent of his Axe body wash. Make sure to check your alignment: is this really who you are now? You are sniffing the dirty laundry of someone who does not love you anymore.
Let that sink into your sits bones for a moment.
Now pick yourself up again for what feels like the fourteen-billionth time and return to the front of your mat. On an inhale, twist the truth of what actually led to your breakup. Let every carelessly unreturned text blossom into the unmistakable sign of an immature man-child who will never be happy in a grownup committed relationship. Stick out your tongue as far as you can and open your heart center to the possibility that everything was actually all his fault, because he’s a giant dickwad.
Take a brief counter-twist to the other side—maybe you’re the problem, and if you hadn’t taken him for granted he would never have pulled away?—and release. Take a moment’s rest in child’s pose.
Feel how your stance on the breakup has changed. Notice tensions where they arise—such as your suspicion that he never liked your friends—and talk about them to your friends over Gchat. At length. Even the tensions that aren’t really important or interesting to anyone but you. This practice, this abundance, is a gift to yourself.
Let the momentum of your new posture carry you forward. Cycle through your social-media platforms, taking a moment to unfollow him on each one. Tune out his “I miss you, Honey Bootie Boo” e-mail. Release his T-shirt into the trash chute. You are a strong, empowered individual. You are a proud Warrior Two of the heart!
Beautiful.
We’ve arrived at the most challenging sequence of our practice today. Be sure to draw on the work we’ve been doing to protect your heart during this inversion.
Sit this one out if you’re menstruating.
Carefully prepare by inhaling two glasses of wine during a bad OKCupid date. Now, bracing yourself against the prospect of humiliation, e-mail your ex back and confess that you miss him, too. Feel that perverse thrill of weightlessness as you flip the power dynamic in his favor.
When he gently responds that he’s kinda started dating someone, let your ego collapse on your mat. Flutter your lips. Allow the energy from the inversion to ignite some deep, fiery disgust for yourself. What the hell was that? What are you doing? Why are you even here? You should be home in bed, Googling the phrase “can you die from lack of human touch.”
Imagine the kind of downward dog your ex’s new girlfriend has. She can probably get her back all the way straight without rounding it and looking like an AT-AT from “Star Wars.” God, you’re a loser.
When you’re ready, lie flat in our final posture, savasana. Corpse pose. Empty your mind. Let everything go, including the thought that once you were someone’s very favorite person, someone who understood you in all of your goofy, grand complexity, and who let you love and understand him back in all of his, and now you are completely, cosmically alone.
Those beard shavings really were gross, though.
Namaste. ♦
