Are you in my way?

Gosh, it seems like days since I practiced and blogged yesterday. A more than full day at work, even though I left the office at noon. A long, heartwrenching session trying to comfort and counsel a co-worker who is feeling frustration and despair at her work situation. I want so much to help, but I can't quite seem to find the key. There's a saying my zen teacher used to quote: "Perhaps more suffering is necessary." That may indeed be the case for her, but just because it's necessary doesn't mean it isn't hella painful. It's weird, because I can see her creating her perception of the situation (karma, again!), but I can't seem to help her shift her perception to a place where it wouldn't be quite so agonizing.

Anyhow, left the office at noon to pick up My Gift for her annual celebration of Lobsterfest at Red Lobster. She has attended Lobsterfest religiously since she was a kid. She picked up on the commercials when she was about 8, and has just always been totally excited about it. Her New England heritage, I guess. Then we went for annual eye exams and the ordering of new glasses and contact lenses. I am a hopeless wreck when it comes to fashion stuff, so I let her pick my glasses. What will I do when she goes off to college? Who will help me pick my clothes? Okay, I'm overstating my ineptness, but not by much.

To continue just a bit with my previous post about left and right: I have also been aware of front and back. Volleyball Guy has been helping me sort out my absurdly tight shoulders, and the other morning, he touched my upper back in down dog and said, "Try to keep an awareness here." I thought, "Oh for goodness sake, I always am trying to press through my upper back and shoulders--how much more awareness can I possibly bring to bear?" But, duh, this morning I finally understood.

I've been cranking at my back and shoulders, totally working my back body, when in fact, I'm going to have to open up my front body if I really want to make this work. I am always rooting around in what is considered "back body" stuff in yoga mythology: the subconscious, intuition, dreams, poetry, memory--that's my comfort zone. It's the front body stuff that throws me--appearance stuff, the everyday stuff, the extravert, social side. So yeah, I have to stretch my front. I'm actually a three-dimensional being, and not just a back and shoulders. Sigh. You'da thought I'd know that.

Enough of that. Let's end with a story My Gift told me at lunch: She was walking through a public doorway with The Frenchman, who is endlessly polite and dear. And fluent with English, though sometimes a little off. They encountered a woman going through the doorway in the opposite direction, and there was some jostling. The Frenchman, trying to be polite (though his attempt was misperceived by the highly insulted woman) said, "Oh, I'm sorry. Are you in my way?"