the pose that keeps changing

There is a pose I have been doing since I was twenty-four, and I am not going to name it, because once you name a pose you start performing its name. I will say that you do it on the floor, and it takes about two minutes, and it is simple enough that a beginner can do it on the first try, and interesting enough that I have not stopped.

In my twenties the pose felt like a stretch. I would count to sixty, find the edge, push slightly past it, come out, and file the pose away as done. I was proud of my range of motion. I had a lot of opinions about my hamstrings.

In my early thirties the pose felt like a test of patience. The edge stopped moving. I would count to sixty and nothing would happen except that I would become aware of my breath, and then my thoughts, and then the various minor discomforts of being alive in a body that had started, very slightly, to keep score.

In my late thirties the pose felt like a letter I had written to myself that I only recently learned to read.

I am not sure what the pose will be when I am fifty. I am curious. The pose has not changed, as far as anyone could see. The arrangement of limbs and floor and breath is the same. The thing that changed is me, and the thing the pose seems to do, now, is show me the shape of that change without comment.

I do not believe every pose will behave this way. Some postures are doors you walk through once. Some are stretches, and they are fine as stretches, and there is no hidden meaning waiting for you. But one or two, chosen almost by accident, turn out to be instruments. You put them down and pick them up years later and they are in tune with a different thing.

If you are at the beginning of a practice, I cannot tell you which pose this will be for you. I can tell you to pick one and come back to it often, and see.