Christmasasana

This year I can actually write about Christmasasana because I didn't have to breathe into the sensations as much as I have had to in the past. I was able to witness the pose and even enjoy parts of it.

I hear so much about Christmas around Christmastime! People who love it but their partners don't. People who don't love it but their partners do. People who don't have partners and wish they did. People who avoid their families. People who enjoy their families.

Often in the past I'd watch my family do a familiar pattern that seemed to include my sister being sent into a tiz and getting close to boycotting the whole event each year. There'd be the mad scramble to get presents for everybody and make sure we all had enough in our stockings.

My family vacillates between who's hosting and what we're eating and what we're giving. Over the years I've had to split my time up between visiting a variety of in-laws and/or introducing my family to whoever was in my life at the time. This year I've been single at Christmas so I wasn't torn and I didn't have to suffer while my partner awkwardly endured my family or I put up with his family's interesting traditions or relatives. That may be the thing that made it the easiest for me. That, and the fact that we all agreed to forget the presents except for Remi, who's only 11 and who actually spent a lot of time working on making things for each person. We ate and played on computers and gave a concert and we were just spending some time with each other and I didn't have to worry about other people much.

Christmasasana tends to stretch the patience and compassion muscles and shows where there are weaknesses in the creativity and communication regions of both the physical and subtle bodies. It's a great time to observe where we are in our families, in our culture, as well as with ourselves. It's just a big pose we call Christmas Posture and it's one that we hold as a culture and there's nothing wrong with it. Some of us like it, some of us don't. Some years we do, some we don't. It changes. Just like a good yoga pose. Ahh.