How I Learned to Pray With my Feet

“The Body is my Temple, Asanas are my Prayers” – BKS Iyengar

There is a difference between knowing something with my head and knowing something with my toes.

When I was 15 and learning how to give a blow job, I used to get all my cues from his feet. If his feet weren’t moving, he wasn’t really feeling. Something needed to change.

When my toes know something, they curl. In anxiety, my second toe likes to try to get on top of my big toe because even though it’s big, big is not a synonym for brave.

In freedom, they spread. Wide.

In ecstasy, they floint. (a rare fusion of point and flex). Excited, they can’t make up their mind. They don’t have to. Yes,

I’ve always been aware of my toes.

The truth in them.

When my head or my heart or my belly or my headheartandbelly feels scared or stifled, I look down.

Ten equal truths,

Waiting to wrap around more of what is true and moving  (sink deeper into what is brown and earthing),

Waiting to wrap around you, Mother.

My toes tell the truth.

When I was small, I discovered the second one.

The second one is from my Father.

The longest one, the way the knuckle was knuckly, the way the tip curled over. It was my monkey one.

Now every man I’ve been with has called me a monkey and that’s not because each were great great observers but simply because

I am a monkey

(and I basically spelled it out for them every time I took off my socks which was often).

At first I was embarrassed.

But after I learned Clown in Theatre School I came to the conclusion that blonde and beautiful is boring. Yes,

I learned to embrace my unsymmetrical face and accept that the sexiest things in life are awkward and strange.

The baby one, the small small Middle-Eastern one, it is Mother –

Small and stubby, there is no nail.

My mother taught me how to play pretend and paint it.

“Only you know there is no nail underneath. Paint over it.”

Yes, I’ve always been aware of my toes.

And this is why I can’t stop doing Toe Squat. And

Like a Ritual, a Great Life’s Quest,

I would like to share the steps with you in great great detail, see

My Great Grandfather (the fourth one) told fantastic stories and

Specifics are important.

I start on all fours. I spread my fingers wide, no

Wider.

Wide enough to feel space to take up space so that the baby is not forgotten, the smallest one the farthest one (Mother, never be forgotten) and

More of me is connected.

I want it in my toes.

I need to find my feet.

And so I kneel.

The texture beneath the pads of my fingers, I press down. As I press down I draw up – energy. Brown, thick black earth energy from beneath me now in the pads of my fingers. And even though my mat is squishy and pink it becomes an earthy, dark dark brown (with a big of red), and so

I release pressure. I walk my palms up my thighs so that my shoulders align with my hips. I sit tall. I bring my ears back in space so that my skull is in line with my spine. I sit taller than I want to. And then I breathe. I breathe deeper than I want to. See

(This is not about my brain, not about symbols or thoughts, no)

I breathe down deep, downer and deeper than my feet because it does not end there.

And when I push myself up to a forward fold I hang heavy. I stay connected to my feet and now without effort without any effort I draw up energy from the earth beneath me (brown, an earthy brown with a bit of red) see

This happens naturally now.

The arches of my feet allow enough space to breathe.

I draw energy up from the earth beneath me and it moves up my ankles and my calves. It funnels through my thigh bones, fast, because it knows that in a moment it will rest in a red pool in my pelvis, see

This is the root.

This is not the end no,

This is the beginning, remember

This is the root.

Once planted it moves to the base of my spine. It swirls, orange and moving. Fast enough to re-create, to remind me of new life, new ideas This. Is. New. It gains enough momentum to travel down my spine like a pre-moistened slide to the base of my neck to the crown of my head and then it drains.

Back into the earth.

I want to find my feet.

I need to find my feet because

I need to feel the earth.

I need to feel the earth because

I am the earth.

Because to practice Toe Squat is to honour the very earth inside of me.

“My Body is a Temple, Asana are my Prayers” – BKS Iyanger

(Watch until the part where he kisses his feet)