BethLapidus
I HAVE A MILLION WAYS to avoid a pose: thinking about something else while I’m in it, slipping out of class to pee or judging everyone else’s poses. My favorite way to avoid a pose has always been to slink off my mat for a sip of water.
But lately, I’m having a hard time using water this way. I don’t feel like I’m a water user any more. Now I feel like I’m a water lover. And, of course, love is complicated.
It used to be so simple. I’d suck on my straw peacefully avoiding the dreaded eagle pose. But now it seems like the water activates my monkey mind the way water was supposed to activate those super cute little sea monkeys you could order from the back of comic books.
I tell myself I shouldn’t be drinking water in class. Water quenches the fire I’m working so hard to stoke. Drinking water mid-practice disturbs the pranic energy body. And my drink is another student’s distraction.
But then my self tells me that I’m thirsty! Oh monkey! As usual the choppy water on my mat reflects the storms gathering in my life. And my relationship with water is one of the biggest storms this season.
In fact, around our home-office these days, water is the ultimate water cooler topic.
“Do you think the water would be happier in the fridge?” I ask Greg as we hover around the Brita. Apparently water becomes more alive in a dark space. Just the way I feel more alive when I’m in the dark space of eyesclosed meditation.
We fantasize about buying The Egg, a high-end ceramic container that keeps water moving and spiraling. Apparently spiraling makes water really happy. Just the way my thighs are really happy when I spiral them in down dog.
“I love you water,” Greg says. “I love you,” I coo to it. It’s like we’re having a three-way with our water.
We’re not the only couple having an open marriage with our liquidy friend. It seems as though water is everywhere now in this slippery fluid time, in our current dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Watergate, water boarding, the rain forest, water wars and Katrina. Water, like that stream of water running through the center of the opening credits of HBO’s In Treatment, is a meme, running through our center. It’s the subconscious rising up, like a thought we can finally hear ourselves thinking.
So it’s not surprising that one of the biggest stars to emerge from the What the Bleep circuit is Dr. Emoto, who says in his NYT bestseller Hidden Messages of the Water that loving and thanking our water changes it for the better! His pictures of water crystals are so seductive. They’re like the Playboy centerfolds of the New Age. His theories are even sexier. He says that with intention, we can transform water and thus transform ourselves (since we are, after all, somewhere between 70-90% water). According to his work (and images), we beautify water by loving and thanking it. By singing to it. By raising our own vibration when we are around it.
Although when I went to see him live, I was disappointed that the merch table had, along with the requisite CDs and books, water tcatchkes, including coasters, stickers and someone was even selling pre-loved water in those squishy plastic bottles too, which we now know are poisoning both us and the water and I’ve which I’ve come to think of as water prisons. Nevertheless, I left the event feeling high and the feeling lasted for days. Best of all, it really did help my relationship with water.
Water is amazing. It will go wherever I tell it to: goblet, espresso maker, Jacuzzi – I am the boss of water. But then again, without water, I will die, so water is the boss of me. I try to practice aqua-asana, being one with the water. Being the water.
Water is a master yogi. So flexible: It twists in and around itself without ever pulling a muscle. So balanced: Water will always find its level. So strong: It wears down rocks and never breaks a sweat. It doesn’t have to. It is sweat. Like many yogis, water is filled with joy: Burbling and splashing and swirling. In fact water is H20. O ho! It’s actually a laugh.
Water, like our Yoga practice, is said to enhance telekinesis, telepathy and telepathic healing. So drinking while practicing might be the one-two punch, or more yogically, the in-out breath that we need to cultivate in order to evolve into intuitive/psychic/third eye seeing millennials.
So maybe when I drink water in class I’m not avoiding challenging poses. Maybe I’m letting water assist in my evolution into a light being. No wonder I always get so insatiably thirsty!
“Thirst”, by the way, comes from a PIE (Proto Indo European) word ters – like terse, dry. It shares the same root as terrain (land). But the word thirst connotes so much more than dry. Dry is a fact. Thirst introduces the idea of desire: The land’s desire for water. Last week I was on a ferry. Cameras clicked as we left the island. Then, out on open water, the cameras were pocketed. When land appeared again, so did the cameras. Travelers were picturing themselves against the place where water and land meet. And I got that each of us is a shoreline, a solid mass quenching its desire for fluidity, movement, flow. And a place where water can satisfy its longing for solidity, stability and groundedness. It always seems to come back to our pesky desire doesn’t it? Technically it’s not the desire that’s the problem. It’s the attachment to the results of trying to have our desires met. But tell that to your heart. Or your heart’s neighbor, your dry mouth.
So to sip or not to sip. That is the question. If vibration effects water, and Yoga classes are such a nexus of good vibes, shouldn’t we be bringing bucket loads of water to flow and Om and meditate around? Isn’t it possible that the water we’re drinking in class is especially nourishing? More thirst quenching? It always feels to me like it is. Especially when I’m running from an annoying pose.
Beth Lapides is navigating change without getting her feet wet and in the meantime, Beth will be performing her show “100% Happy 88% of the Time,” Friday, Sept. 25 at Yoga Sanctuary, in Las Vegas. You can start to subscribe the audio version of “My Other Car is a Yoga Mat” on her website: bethlapides.com.
By BethLapidus
Beth Lapides is the creatrix and host of UnCabaret. You may know her from her LA Yoga My Other Car is A Yoga Mat column, as the author of “Did I Wake You, Haiku For Modern Living”, from her appearances on Sex & The City, NPR and Comedy Central or from her writing in O Magazine, Elle Decor and Los Angeles Magazine. She teaches her workshop The Comedian’s Way privately in LA and annually at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. UnCabaret is her long running comedy show in which she asks the very best comedians working what is going on with you now. The show is known for being uniquely about the present and every Sunday a completely unique experience unfolds. In the past two years Beth has collaborated with Mitch Kaplan, both on the music for her New Agey comedy show “100% Happy 88% of the Time” and at UnCabaret where Mitch is Musical Director. Adding music to the comedy is like adding an out breath to the in, a vowel to the consonant. UnCabaret is intimate, conversation, idiosyncratic and fun intentional.