Your Other Right

As a student, there are times in yoga practice when I confuse my left from my right. It doesn’t happen so much now, but I notice it with students particularly when I’m teaching a basics class. When I go to make the correction, the student either ignores me completely, looks down at their foot, or into the faces of their fellow practitioners who all happen to be facing them.

During my last mammogram, the technician invited me into the exam room, got me all chatty to get my mind off the compression that was coming and asked me to place my right hand on the machine handle. Happily, I grabbed the handle with my left hand. She kindly asked me again, and it was as though I was frozen and couldn’t make the switch. Looking dead at my left hand, I had an out of body experience watching myself looking at my left hand convinced that it was my right. Was I crazy? The technician remarked, “Oh, it’s because you’re (mind is) doing something else”. Well kudos to her because the diversion technique worked like a charm and had me convinced that I was there for the sole purpose of having a delightful conversation. It was eerily too easy.

I mentioned that my confusion in class still happens but over the years less frequently, but unlike in my first year or two or three of practice, I’ve learned to become aware of when this occurs. The mind was created to be persistent, relentless and just plain insistent on creating its own reality through imagining, projecting, revisiting, judging, obsessing, yada yada yada. Yoga practice will not stop you from putting your other right foot forward, but it can help you to immediately realize that you’ve done so. When I teach intermediate students and say, “you’re other right” they quickly switch their footing.

Back to the doctor’s office. Physical, mental and spiritual awareness have been the most valuable gifts my yoga practice has given me. I not only remember the conversation I had with the technician, but also her name, the number of people in the waiting room and the weather that day. Back in 2004, I would have left the office murmuring something about THE TECHNICIAN not knowing her left from her right, whether I placed my insurance card back in my wallet and wondering where in the heck did I park the car.