I had been using a five-foot-long, smooth PVC stick in my yoga practice for a while.
Not as a prop.
As an object of awareness.
Instead of thinking about extending my arm into a yoga posture, I would extend the stick. Instead of thinking about straightening my back, I would lift the stick higher. Instead of reaching farther with my hand, I would push the stick in that direction.
It felt different.
Somehow, my body stretched more easily when I was moving the stick rather than trying to move my body.
I could push the stick to one side, sweep it across my body, bring it closer, move it farther away. I began making larger, more flowing movements, almost like rolling a boat or paddling a kayak.
I had been doing this for a while.
Then the other day, something unexpected happened.
I held the stick vertically in one hand.
I began moving it from side to side, turning my body along with it.
But my attention wasn’t on my body.
It was on the stick.
I kept my eyes perfectly fixed on it.
I moved the stick.
And then I noticed something strange.
The stick wasn’t moving anymore.
At least, that’s what it looked like.
The stick seemed to be standing still, perfectly vertical, while the room behind it moved back and forth.
I moved the stick.
But I saw the room moving.
For a moment, the stick had become the still point.
And the room had become what was moving.
That was the interesting part.
Not the stick.
Not the room.
The change in what I was experiencing as the point that was still.
I had been using the stick to help me move my body.
Now the stick had somehow become the place from which I was seeing the movement.
