Muscles have memory

Muscles have memory. Each moment, each touch, lives with us
forever, stored in our cells if not in our consciousness.

In yoga, the goal is to harmonize awareness throughout the body,
releasing what is in your muscles, positive or negative, as well as
what is your mind, not to forget, but to be conscious of each memory
without judgment.

Over the past month and a half, I have strayed a bit from my hatha
yoga practice (the movement branch of yoga), challenging my body in
new ways, asking my muscles to find and move beyond new limits.
Running, with a new pair of shoes (back to shoe theory) and a new
concept of my body, my weight as being limited only by my perception
of it, became a new practice in mindfulness and yoga, working to open
my body as I gained stamina and strength. On the final day, I was
able to run the entire length of the causeway without slowing down to
a walk. Now my muscles know they can do this, and they will
remember it.

Dancing also created a new openness, a new awareness of movement,
requiring both a focused concentration and a release of thought --
you must simultaneously feel the music and surrender to the lead of
your partner while maintaining absolute control over each step in
time with each beat and desire of the leader. Moreover, that desire
might be a moment where you are given the freedom to not follow, to
listen to your own heart and rhythm, until the moment when he calls
you back to synchronized coordination.

Surrender and awareness.

The more you do this, the more your body remembers. I attended an
intermediate salsa class today and the instructor suggested I try the
advanced. "You only need to focus on shifting your weight on the
correct beats, the more you do it, the more your body will remember
it," he observed and advised. I stayed and by the end of the three
hours I could feel the movement becoming a part of me, taking over my
body.

Surrender and awareness.

All this culminates in snowboarding, where the loss of any of these
results in rather unpleasant falls. For four hours, I found new
ways to coordinate and control my body, new levels of strength and
focus. My muscles remember (and rebel a bit, with today being the
first day I could sit with absolutely no pain whatsoever).

After the several sessions of dancing per week, the running, and the
snowboarding (a one time, but extremely intense endeavor), I notice a
new strength and stamina in my yoga practice have brought new
challenges in my extension and openness. It is not so much the
inability to extend or a lack of openness, but a new awareness of the
muscles and strength in the extension, a certain shifting of how it
is done and how it all fits together.

So I breathe and wait, reveling in the strength and treating my
egotistic goals ("But I used to be able to do this . . .) with
compassion until they fade. As my own resistance is shed, my spine
opens and I melt forward, folding completely in half, my chest on my
thighs, hugging my beautiful self in peace, feeling both my strength
and my openness, moving deeper into what I thought I left behind or
lost, the satisfaction more than I knew.

Strong and soft, like a palm tree able to bend, not crack, in
hurricane level winds.

Our muscles have memory. Returning to yoga, my muscles rejoice,
missing the balance between the strength and openness, the challenge
and the comfort. That is something I can go back to. Other
memories are less accessible: a palm, an embrace, a kiss, a tongue, a
heart muscle singing to my heart muscle through breast bones, muscles
and skin, one muscle longing for its match.