It’s been awhile since I rolled out my yoga mat for practice. Honestly, I’ve never had much of an attachment to my mat. For me, the yoga mat simply provides cushion and padding, a stable base to ‘go deeper’, reach toward mobility. I’ve had many through the years, various brands, colors, stickiness. For me, my practice isn’t measured by the surface I practice on. Commonly the yoga mat gives us boundaries. It allows us to practice within a community and at the same time provides a personal space. A tool for direction, measurement, association and relationship to our body. It also protects us, reserves our own private experience, a personal domain. Early yogis believed the mat (or rather rug or animal hide) offered conservation for spiritual energy by separating their focused, energetic body from the wild, influential energies of the earth. On our mat we sweat and release, we can invite teachers and partners to our mat, we have control of our jurisdiction. Yet, it gives permission and perhaps spirited discernment to welcome the unexpected and unpredictable. I’ve had this particular mat for almost 5 years now. The only reason I know this is because my only nephew will turn five in a few months. I am reminded of the night of his birth every time I unfurl the textured rubber and see simple remains of which to me looks like a child’s handprint smeared into the porous surface. There is no way this imprint (stain) was actually made by a newly born baby’s. My nephew didn’t emerge out of his mother’s birth canal onto my yoga mat. On the contrary, his mother spent hours in active labor pacing, groaning, swaying, gently whispering and embracing her fearless ‘Captain’ – her loving and supportive partner in birth and parenthood. This was her second babe and she decided she had proven to herself from her first birth that she could birth her second in their apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn, with only the company of her unfaltering team: her husband, her midwife and her doula, me. Most of her early labor was spent in the bathroom lying in the tub surrounded by the soothing temperature and gentle weight of water. By the time she made it into the bedroom, my bedroom, she was in full Transition Phase. The sun had gone down by then and now the only lights that flickered were from a single blue candle and the gentle spill of the light coming from the kitchen. Earlier in the afternoon I covered the hardwood flooring with said yoga mat, and a birth ball. I prepared extra sheets, towels and a mattress casing for the bed. It transformed into a sacred space, a womb in and of itself. Moments before my courageous sister decided the time had come to push, she was in her zone, communing with the goddesses of birth and life. She was bare from the waist down and her body was swaying gently. Gentle contours of light outlined her full-term, expressive belly. Her face would grimace and tighten as contractions waxed and waned like the lapping of waves in a tremendous storm. Yet in between the waves there was full breath and peace where she surrendered to ease. She was tired. “Perhaps, in this moment she was on sacred ground…” The mat become her refuge– a calm island on an active sea. A carved-out personal space for this intense moment. It was a division from the (familiar) realia of the room and the ethereal parallel of sensation and innermost knowing. Privacy. A space all her own for her birth, her body, her mental and physical dilation. Perhaps, in this pivotal moment on the mat, swaying, held up by a hug between her and her partner, this yoga mat served as a vessel to connect to the power of the universe to feel a kinship with all the birthing women who have gone before and all who will follow. Perhaps, in this moment she was on sacred ground, a textured surface whose purpose vacillated between physical stimulation and new information manifested in the shifts and surges throughout her body. She realized it would soon be time to push. She was about to see this little person that she had been carrying for 42 weeks. Her young family dynamic would change forever. It was a turning point, crossing a threshold from anxiety and nerves to excitement and power. She turned to the bed, off the mat. The time had come to engage in her deeper strengths. On this night, some leakage (perhaps even a little vernix) had been smeared into the textured grip of my humble [yoga] mat. Each time I see it I refer to as ‘birth’. Birth in the shape of a tiny, brand new paw print. From her body, from her baby– my nephew. The previous months had marked a truly visceral training. They both had been in communication, learning the wisdom of an ancestral miracle. Birth. Their mutual efforts would bring a miraculous energy and life-force into this world. Every time I unroll my mat and see the imprint I am reminded of that night; of the strength and power of my sister, of the power of women who’ve shared in a similar experience, and of my nephew, Arley Bay Rose. What a beautiful little human he has grown into. And when I step on my mat and into its noble space, I allow it to preface my practice to give me strength and ease and beauty in every breath as I move. I greet the blessings and trials of the past. I welcome new information, new sensation, a rebirth of this practice, a rebirth of my own perception of its purpose and its power. As I enter, I query, what vulnerabilities will I uncover? What new discoveries will I take with me off my asana island today?
