How I met my younger self on the yoga mat

Inner child healing

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I had only shown up to this practice a few months before. I’d been hungry for healing and a release from the pain inside my bones. And so I perused my parents' bookshelf and came across two yoga books barely used yet faded from the seventies. I didn’t know a thing about yoga, really, but I knew that there was something in me that needed to move and heal.  

I didn’t even have a mat, but I went outside on hot summer days with tall grass, slightly wet from evening rain, and began to make shapes as the book told me to. My body hurt all over with fatigue thick like a raincloud. Every move I made just brought me back to child’s pose, where my body curled up like a baby until the wave of feelings that had been tucked inside my lungs subsided. I wasn’t ready for that tsunami of grief. Still, day after day, I showed up to the outside, willing myself to break through. This practice, in a sense, saved me, pulled me out of my bed, and dared me to live again.

After my body began to build strength and the depression in me lifted a little bit, I decided to attend a yoga retreat at a ranch outside of Sedona, Arizona. The sight of the red canyons rising up to meet the clouds was otherworldly. Their formations curved and twisted like a wave, and the sunlight highlighted the peaks while the shadows hung close to the crevices. The rocks were marked with ancient petroglyphs during sacred ceremonies performed by indigenous peoples dating back to 6,000 years ago. It was no wonder this land was considered holy, as the quiet hum of the desert seemed to sound like God breathing as we sat and meditated on the tops of dusty mountains. The air was thick with sand as I stared up at the sunset sky. Oh my God, the sky was a painted watercolor streaked with pinks and blues that went on for miles. 

There were a number of women there of all ages and backgrounds, many fitting the cliche of tight yoga pants and bohemian headbands. In truth, I struggled to connect with many of them, except for one of the instructors, Jo, who had an older sister quality to her that I craved. She had beautiful, long brown, flowy hair and a smile that looked cut out of a magazine, but more than that, she was authentic as she shared vulnerable stories from her life, the broken parts, as well as the glue that helped her put them back together. Then she would ask me about mine, and her presence, the magical being that she was, made me feel like I could tell her anything. When I wasn’t hovering near Jo, I was off exploring the canyons, putting my hands into the hot dirt, praying with postures that could speak more than my mouth could at the time.

The last evening, after a week of meditation, movement, and lots of tofu, we gathered for a closing ceremony. My body took my favorite shape of Supta Baddha Konasana. This was a pose in which you lie down, knees open wide with feet pressed together. To me, it’s the ultimate posture of surrender and vulnerable trust. The music played softly, and the teacher said things that I can’t recall now. I’m not sure if it even mattered because what moved me that night wasn’t her words; it wasn’t the ambiance, the essential oils filling the air. No, what moved me was the fact that my body felt safe enough to tell a story I didn’t know my body knew.  

It’s a strange thing to write about dissociation because when it happens, you are absent from your body, so recalling memories around something you weren’t there for is nearly impossible. Here is what I do know about what happened during that pose: I began to cry. Not like a single tear, are you using eye drops? kind of cry, rather, the levee broke and the whole ninth ward of my life flooded out of me in a moment. My adult body seemed to collapse into a younger body. A childlike version of myself laying there in that yoga retreat room, but somehow back in a different space altogether, with a view of the walls once deserts brown, now pasty white, from a thin yoga mat to a thick mattress, from soft breathing to something heavy and suffocating. What happened next is only what the women at the retreat told me later. I had, after all, mentally exited the building and time-traveled to a younger version of myself who had never been given a voice to share before.  

 The next thing I remember, women from the retreat were gathered all around me, and my body was covered in blankets. 

“What happened?” I asked Jo, who sat on her mat next to me. 

“You don’t remember? Her eyes were wild and teary. “You started crying, just normal crying at first, then you began wailing, and your voice changed. It became young, like a really young Megan. You sounded as if you were two or three years old. We thought there was a baby in the room, but then realized it was you.” 

I had no recollection of that at all, and yet there was a deep knowing inside that little me made an appearance because she felt safe, too.  

After everyone had left the room, my body was shaking wildly, but only on the inside where no one could see. I stepped out under the open desert sky and prayed for the little girl in me who had something to heal. It felt as though a door had been opened to a prison that I didn’t know existed, and suddenly, I was free to go. My body continued to vibrate until the next morning. When it finally stopped, I was sad. Sad that what had transpired ended, but little did I know it was just the beginning.  

 After the retreat, I began my research on how the body holds stories and trauma. I wanted to know what that little girl in me knew, what made her show up and cry out the way she did. As I dove into books and articles, my attention was drawn to the hips as the location of the emotional center. More specifically, the psoas muscle, which wraps around the pelvis to the spine and is even known as the “fight and flight” muscle in moments of high stress. I thought about how my body was postured that day, how my hips were open, and how they eventually relaxed when I was able to cry out and then let go.  

My therapist’s words came back to me as I reflected. “Your body is brilliant, ”she had said. For the first time, I believed it. For years, my body had held memories, pain, and unspoken stories like boxes tucked deep in an attic, but now, suddenly, the attic door was flung open. I could see the boxes, and I could touch them. And, if I was patient, I could open them carefully one by one to see what was inside. 

Thank you so much for reading. I appreciate your open heart. Love, Megan

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