On Camel Pose
You take a deep breath and stretch your body upward even as you kneel, shins planted firmly into the ground, the top of your feet glued to the floor. Your hands are anchors pressed soundly into your lower back.
Each slow sip of breath helps you reach higher into the sky until you must bend. Your spine curves in a backward swan dive; your chest is open, more open than you've dared let it be all day. It is as if the backward movement peels back the layers of your day like fragile onion skins from your body. Slowly your hands fall from your back to cup your heels, grounding you so you can fly. Your arms have become wings that lift you from your day.
You can feel your heart beating through your rib cage, light seeping through the slats of your chest bones. The well of emotion tumbles out of you, starting first in your belly, then traveling up your spine, and pouring out of your heart; it is a song you had forgotten you could sing. Your throat tightens then opens, ready to receive this luminous gift--the breath, the song, the slow dance--of camel pose, releasing all that has been buried in your soul, covered in a layer of dust, to be purged through your open chest, a ball of cleansing light.