“Relax,” she ordered.

But how to relax,
when your teacher is trying
to rip off your arms?

“Breathe,” she said.

Oh how I tried,
but I gasped and suffocated instead.

When the world is upside down
how should the air find your lungs?

“Don’t move your arm!” she scolded gently.

But a rebel arm kept
jerking to one side,
governed by a mind of its own,
irreverent to the desperate pleas
of my exposed heart.

“Kapotasana is a bitch,” I wrote in an email to my teacher back home.

“Kapotasana is an ego killer,” she replied.

“Extend your arms. Keep your head off the ground,” chirped a teacher in a YouTube video.

I extended my arms. I kept my head off the ground.
I surrendered completely.

“I trust you with my life,” my cells spoke to Saraswathi from an unnameable place. “If worse comes to worst you’ll just snap off my arms.”

“Relax,” she ordered.

I relaxed.

“Breathe,” she said.

I breathed.

And my hands clutched my heels for the very first time.

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Editor apprentice: Emma Ruffin / Editor: Rachel Nussbaum

Photo: Alice Popkorn/Flickr