What are you holding on to right now? As you read those words, ask yourself if there is weight on you that you could set down for even a moment. Perhaps it’s an old grief, a sadness, a lack, a bitterness or fear. Maybe it’s the physical condition of stress or maybe it’s mental. Are you holding on to tightness around your chest and shoulders like a heavy cloak? Is there a fight you’re replaying in your mind? Is there a way you think you ought to be, look, act that has you in its grip?
When I first met Carolyn Channell, a lovely and experienced teacher who’s come to offer her classes with Jala, she told me about the first time she laid down in Savasana. “I thought, Finally. This is my moment to exhale. Everyone should get to exhale like that.” Yes, Carolyn, I agree. Everyone should get to exhale like that.
I read part of the story of Michelangelo’s David recently. Michelangelo was not the first man commissioned to do this work. Two men came before him. The first, Agostino di Duccio, inexplicably abandoned the work after shaping some of the legs, feet and torso, and the second artist, Antonio Rossellino, had his contract canceled. Michelangelo came to the work nearly twenty-five years later, a young man barely twenty-six years old. For more than two years, he never left the side of his David. He worked and slept near the marble, allowing the subject within to call to him. When the 17-foot statue finally emerged, Michelangelo said, “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” Asked how he made it, Michelangelo said, “It is easy. You just chip away the stone that doesn’t look like David.”
I saw this unbelievable work of stone a few years ago. I didn’t anticipate the reaction I’d have when I first entered the room of the David. I was overcome with such awe and stood silent and tearful–filled with such joy that something so beautiful could be created. Maybe it’s easy to be breathless with awe in the presence of a 17-foot masterpiece. However, when I open myself to gratitude and deep presence, I am, over and again, filled to overflowing with this same kind of awe in my daily life. The amazing thing is that, in these moments of pure joy, it’s not just the masterpiece that I observe, but that I also become. In those moments, when I set down everything that is not gratitude and joy, it’s like I’ve chipped away everything that doesn’t look like me in my most perfect state and then I set the angel beneath the stone free.
That’s what a deep and full exhale–the kind of exhale that releases body, mind and spirit–feels like, I think. The stone that encases a very splendid place can fall away and from a place of rest, or peace, we set something free that looks a whole lot more joyful.
What does this exhale look like? It is lying down in savasana, but it is also the release of the forward fold or the opening into a back-bend. It’s the pausing to notice the masterpieces that come as sunsets, hands tenderly held, forgiveness offered. It’s the daily sighs of gratitude that spill out into small cups of joy. It feels like setting something heavy down or like some hard and unnecessary place has been chipped away. It’s our truest state of being, just waiting to be set free.