Noticing the space around people and things provides a different way of looking at them, and developing this spacious view is a way of opening oneself. When one has a spacious mind, there is room for everything. When one has a narrow mind, there is room for only a few things.
—Ajahn Sumedho, “Noticing Space,” Tricycle Magazine
Never mind that she didn’t know
how to spell it. Never mind she didn’t
know where it was. Never mind
she had never once given it a thought.
Rosemerry’s psoas was aware of her. Buried in her body,
engaged in its habitual patterns of holding on,
the psoas had not heard about how
fine she was doing, how relaxed she
she was, how she was learning more
each day about the art of letting go.
The psoas was not in any hurry. The psoas
let her believe whatever it was she wanted
to believe about her posture, her flexibility,
her strength. And when Rosemerry finally
did meet her psoas, it was a very quiet invitation.
She had thought she was on a date
with her ischial tuberosities, or perhaps
with her left adductor, her left hamstring,
or her left knee. But there, beneath her awareness,
patient and persevering, the muscle waited
in silent revolution. It’s all subtle until it is not.
The burn of it, the gasp of it, the unlayering
of pain. The red of it, she nearly panted,
the wilting of her bravery. And oh, the space
left in her then, how lying on the table
she felt how she was being breathed
and for one moment glimpsed, not with dread,
but with gratitude, a little hint of just how much
deeper she might go.
*with thanks to Tim Lafferty