Weaving And Unweaving A Narrative
To open a narrative that has become too tight requires techniques, practices … rituals, even. Sometimes you even throw it in the fire. For us, the unstitching part takes the techniques we know to erase the tracks of time, to aerate what has become sedimented, and to cast on new stitches.
The story of Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, who waits for her husband to return from war, is often referenced in Katonah yoga. In the myth, Penelope is pressured to choose a new suitor. To buy herself time, she promises that once she finishes weaving a burial shroud for her father-in-law, she will decide. But she doesn’t want to decide, so each day, she weaves, and each night, she unravels the day’s stitches. This daily cycle of weaving and unweaving becomes her way of holding off time; it is a kind of protest testifying to her inner knowing and belief in what is her true destiny.
In the context of the Katonah practices, the myth is a metaphor for the mind. We would do well to learn to do what Penelope did. Our minds are constantly weaving the material of our worlds into a form, into our story. With each row of stitches, we weave our narrative until it becomes the only story we know. The lesson is that we must learn to make stitches, but also to undo them. This is the true job of the mind: not to cling to every thought, but to know when to knit, when to unravel, and how to begin again.
And before anything can be woven, the material must be prepared. You don’t start knitting with tangled yarn scattered on the floor; you first wind it into a ball. The same is true of the mind. Before it can produce anything coherent, before you can start to weave a more intentional narrative, the mind must be organized, gathered, and given form.
In one of the first classes I took with Nevine Michaan, she said, “Bitterness is the greatest defeat in life,” and that a good yoga practice is designed to keep one from being bitter. In her estimation, bitterness comes from holding too tightly to our narratives such that one’s world becomes smaller and smaller. Like tight stitches on a knitting needle. To open a narrative that has become too tight requires techniques, practices… rituals, even. Sometimes you even throw it in the fire. For us, the unstitching part takes the techniques we know to erase the tracks of time, to aerate what has become sedimented, and to cast on new stitches.
MORE PRACTICE NOTES
To open a narrative that has become too tight requires techniques, practices… rituals, even. Sometimes you even throw it in the fire. For us, the unstitching part takes the techniques we know to erase the tracks of time, to aerate what has become sedimented, and to cast on new stitches.