Yoga training starts soon, and as instructed I have been getting my required books for the class. Two have already arrived:

I can’t tell you how I excited I am about getting BOOKS! For a CLASS!! The last time I did this was January of 2007!!

So I immediately began reading Yoga Anatomy. I mean, how could I not? Look at the cover. I flip it open and the first page says, “Yoga Lessons From a Cell”

Pause.

We’re starting at the cellular level? Really? …at this point you can imagine my energy levels dropping, my sense of academia kicking in, and my acceptance that, yes Corey, this is probably for a good reason…

Fine.

And seriously, not even halfway down the page, I’m already loving it. Loving that the author, Leslie Kaminoff, is saying that understanding the cell helps us understand ourselves, and yoga in a more accepting way. He introduces the concept of prana and apana. Prana is what is taken into a cell (or being) as nourishment AND the action that brings it. Apana is the complementary force, that being what is eliminated from the cell (or being) and the action of releasing it. (To break it down - prana would be like both eating the enchilada, and the delicious enchilada itself. Apana would be going to the bathroom afterwards and the resulting excrement.) Prana and Apana are the “essential activities of life.”

Then, he goes on.

“The [cell] membrane’s structure has to allow things to pass in and out of it - it has to be permeable. It can’t be so permeable, however, that the cell wall loses its integrity; otherwise, the cell will either explode from the pressures within or implode from the pressures outside. The cell’s membrane must balance containment (stability) with permeability.”

Imagine me, in bed, light bulbs going off.

The cell is the smallest part of me. The cell has to be strong enough to still be a cell, but permeable enough to let things in. Hello, I have to be strong enough to still be me, to understand what that means, what that requires, what that allows. But I have to be permeable enough to allow things to affect, in essence, enter who I am. WHAT?! HOW DID A CELL JUST BECOME ME?! And how is it that a cell so easily can identify what its barriers are, what it is, how it defines itself? When I with my big brain still have trouble answering those questions?

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