Let it heal.

5 sun salutation A's. Sunday practice early in the fall. Each updog feels like the wheel in the thoracic spine and the lower abs and the psoas. Each exhale in downdog takes about 7 seconds, at least. The wrist sensations are bruise pain, a dull ache that extends from the first thumb knuckle about four inches up the forearm, but not white pain, not electric at all; an old purple-brown blood blister pain, more ugliness than pain at all. On the way out. Healing.

These are cocoon practices, slower, deeper, more attentive, longer breaths, fewer poses, but no less intense, when added together. Typical of the move from summer to fall. Heat and energy and lightness move toward dilated time, expanded seconds, expanded sensitivity, heightened awareness instead of heightened flexibility. All of the jumps were still light, but now time is more like maple syrup instead of lightning and sunshine. Everything is browner, thicker, slower.

These more passive and attentive practices are also the mourning of the passing of my high holy season. Power and sweat still await, but in an ever-mysterious introversion which is so totally unlike my waking personality that I can never summon it; it has to well up from some invisible interior during the fall and winter.

These seasons are when the practice most tellingly "does me" instead of the other way around.