The raging nun has disappeared.
There is a spindly oak that grows outside our bedroom window. If I lean just forward enough in națarājāsana, I can make out the nun’s glaring eyes and severe features etched into the rough, sage-grey bark of the tree. I have seen her up there for months now. She seems to thrust menacingly out of the oak, pointing an accusing, twiggy finger at me. Her mouth is a cold, straight slit. Sometimes I don’t want to face her admonishing stare and so I cheat a bit on the posture, not sloping into it quite so much.
Any ballerina knows that when practicing spins you must find a stationary point on which to focus or you will topple over. The yogini knows it is the same principle that proves true when practicing a balance pose. You need something steady to gaze on to keep yourself upright.
Națarājāsana is the “lord of dance pose.” Balanced on my right leg, the opposite foot stretched behind me and held up by my left hand, my free arm reaching forward and upward, I am a tiny axis upon which the earth tilts and spins.
This is the conundrum of it all. Even when standing still, each of us is twirling at the audacious speed of the earth’s rotation—about 1040 miles an hour at the equator—and careening through space around the sun at over 66,000 miles an hour. Meanwhile, our entire solar system swirls around the core of our galaxy at nearly 500,000 miles an hour. It is a challenge to find a fixed star and hold one’s centre.
Today, I grasp one foot, arch my back like a drawn bow and give națarājāsana everything I’ve got. When I look for Sister SternFace up in the branches, she is not there to give me her reproach. Instead, I spot a hummingbird feeding at the lanky agapanthus. He plunges his little ruby head deep into the purple blooms and my heart begins to beat as fast as his iridescent emerald wings. Perhaps he has spun the angry nun away.