Rooted and Reaching: Vrksasana, Tree Pose

To practice Tree Pose, gaze at the horizon. Root one foot at a time, downward, grounding into the earth while reaching the hands upward.

Being a branch on my family tree means I once danced in a Celtic tutu with silk-screened shamrocks and a green leotard, space between my thin thighs (maternal side) when my knees touched. The family garden seemed to me not as green as myself when doing The Irish Dance. I was youngest in the dance class, younger than my sister, though we had equal chores in the house and garden. I loved to plant the onion bulbs, their roundness like candies or all-seeing eyes, and the peas whose seeds were the peas themselves coated in chemical pink. You made your finger rigid, loaded the pea at your fingertip, pushed it gently until the dirt obscured, pulled back your pink-dusted finger, wondered. “You,” who is four or five, you hardly know, your questions and wonders sprout and vie for space, water, light.

Being a branch on my family tree means that when I lie in bed, 11 or 12 years old, listening to the sound of a train whistle somewhere beyond the woods past the neighbor’s fields and pastures, I probably wasn’t the only one thinking, “Someone’s getting away.”

Being a part of my family means that I have high cholesterol, am suspicious, probably that I enable, avoid, repress, and am sometimes negative—I notice I have not listed positive traits. Some parts of my family are sometimes smart, sometimes arty, with a good spatial sense and heartbreakingly neat handwriting. I inherited the ability to acclimate, an ear for accents, good balance, and good aim—I can group my shots tightly around the bull’s eye with both handgun and rifle.

Gaze at the horizon. The Buddhist nun who guides the meditation classes suggests one evening, after our initial meditation in which we bring our attention to the present place and time, then to our bodies, and then to the breath, that much of what frustrates and catches us unaware we could in fact anticipate. Could this be true? I had recently finished a four-year PhD, before that a three-year MFA, and each semester I had taught freshman writing. Each semester I dreaded talking about gender-neutral language. Every semester for seven years my chest tightened when some Collin or Kyle wondered aloud what the big deal was, why write more or different words when we all know what “he” means. After the nun’s talk I shift to an offensive position. Before the first papers come in, one day I stand at the front of the room and say “he” to the class, pause, and then ask, “How many of you pictured a woman?”

Women regularly stand still and listen, need to go home, sometimes on foot, sometimes alone. In myth, woman are regularly pulled below the earth or turned into trees. When a woman turns into a tree her feet slow and take root, her limbs grow heavy. Wrapped in bark, her arms become branches, her blood, sap, and the sap that trickles down the tree becomes her tears. Her fingers extend into leafy branches, her hair greens. Sometimes she waves wildly, sometimes she barely stirs. Sometimes she cries out, in anger or sadness, and why are these the choices?

A person holding Tree Pose, Vrksasana, appears part triumphant, part bound: arms reaching straight up overhead, toes spread and pressing into the ground.

I know how to stand tall when I encounter a mountain lion, and how to drop my eyes and back away from a bear. Some days I add heels to jeans and a t-shirt. I know I’m digging into something dark if I’m possessed, simultaneously, by gut pain and shoulder slump; I know I’m feeling bound by convention if I fuss with my hair.

One way of measuring a tree is to fall from it.

—Lewis Blackwell, The Life and Love of Trees

Inhale and bring the sole of one foot to rest on the thigh of the...