Years ago - 10 or 12 years ago - I was working with a yoga teacher (Hi Marley!) who instructed me during class one day to engage my lats.
My what?
My lats.
I didn’t grow up playing sports (other than middle school girls’ winter soccer which I played because it was a requirement to play a sport in middle school), and I wasn’t a dancer or a gymnast. My body connectivity was, shall we say say poor? At best. I’ve always been more than my head in my body.
So Marley tells me, 10 or 15 years ago, to engage my lats, and I say I don’t know what you’re talking about, and she points to this area under my armpits, which, it turns out, are muscles called the latissimus dorsi. Which, it further turns out, come in super handy when you’re carrying a backpack. If you know they’re there.
When I first started trying to engage my lats, it was an exercise in futility. There was exactly zero communication between my brain and this region under my armpits. So we spent painstaking time working to establish a channel of communication, and eventually there arose a faint whisper of awareness.
It was a slow slow process, it’s still a process, 10 or 12 or fifteen years later. Some days I remember I have lats, some days I don’t. Some days I want my lats to help me carry a backpack and they’re asleep on the job. Some days they’re tired or tender from overuse. Two steps forward, one step back. Two steps forward, three steps back.
Why am I telling you this story about the muscles under my armpits? It’s not because I am becoming a personal trainer. It’s because the latissimus dorsi are not so different from the muscles we use when we practice noticing good things. Sometimes we don’t know we have those muscles until someone points it out to us. Sometimes we have to work at establishing the channel of communication between our brains and the muscles before we can get them to fire. Some days the muscles don’t want to perform. Some days they’re tired or tender or cranky and we’re left with the weight of the backpack resting squarely on our shoulders.
This is why we practice. To establish the channel, to keep it open and flowing, to make those muscles stronger, to make available a consistent access to the muscles that can help us to notice the teeny tiny often overlooked things in our lives, the things that are simple and good. To help us carry the backpacks of our lives.
Practice with me, will you?
Thursday:
Cat was flexible and we were able to FaceTime when I had to change our meeting time.
Uncle Jimmy landed safely in Baltimore. Spending this unexpected time together.
Blue sky in the morning after 3 days of rain.
Now you? Tell me 3 good things?
Xo.
April 7
1. I’m grateful for your reminder to see three good things.
2. A peaceful slow walk.
Fun fussing around the house by myself.
1. I am hand sewing a dress that I cut out and although I have done this before, I am amazed I can do it.
2. Deciding early in the day to go out for ramen for dinner. It was perfect for the cold and gray weather and I didn’t have to cook.
3. Kate is coming home Saturday and I feel like a kid waiting for Christmas.