A couple of days ago in yoga class the instructor was guiding us through a meditation. As we lay on our backs, the teacher asked us to breathe the energy from our heart chakra into our entire bodies. She asked us to imagine that every part of our body was infused with soft, loving, heart-energy. "Don't just feel the energy in your body," she said, "be the energy. Be the love." Normally, when I hear new-agey stuff like the over-used, ill-defined "be love," I roll my eyes. I mean, how the hell does someone "be love?" But when my yoga teacher told us to be loving energy, rather than feel it, I was in such a relaxed, blissful state, I thought "Hey, I'm already there." My body felt like a big, mushy blob of love, and it felt fabulous.
This morning I repeated the same exercise in a restorative yoga class. Restorative yoga consists of gentle poses held for long periods of time, supported by props (cushions, blocks, straps etc.), so that the only thing exerting any effort is gravity. So I had lots of time to imagine myself as Love. Our instructor kept reminding us to breathe, deeply and fully, which I did. But I was also filling myself up with love. Or so I imagined. After all, I'm an actress, and I can act or be anything I imagine. Kids do it all the time when they "pretend." If you've ever watched children as they play, you'll see some of the most committed "pretending" there is. Student actors perform numerous exercises for developing the imagination. They'll be asked to pose as if they're all sorts of things they're not: other people, animals, inanimate objects, and a host of things in nature such as trees, flowers, mountains, winds and seas. (Come to think of it, it happens a lot in yoga, too - upward and downward dogs, eagles, trees, mountains etc.) So if we can act as if we're a seed growing into a flower, why can't we play at being an emotion? And if I'm going to meditate on being an emotion, I figure love is a good one.
So that's what I did. It was especially easy to do when I was lying on my back, arms outstretched, exposing my heart. It's an open, vulnerable position, and all sorts of emotions can come up, and they frequently do. To make the exercise more effective, I focussed on being an actor, which I am, who was practising yoga, which I do. I looked as if I were in a yoga class, but I felt like I was doing a "magic as if" exercise in an actor's workshop. It was Acting 101 all over again.
It was the best acting-cum-yoga class ever. I took a feather-light, airy-fairy journey in my mind to find out what it is to Be Love, whilst sustaining a pose to realign my spine and stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system. Focussing on my breathing didn't distract me from my intention to Be Love. In fact, it made it easier. I've taken many acting classes in my day, done a lot of exercises, and performed a number of different roles (but not as many as I would have liked), and I can't remember when I've enjoyed being something else so much.
Being love, rather than being in love, or loving, is an act of the imagination. Humans aren't emotions. We have emotions, and we feel emotions. You can't see them, and you can't see the imagination, either, but that's where you go to be anything you want. Playing with the imagination, the way actors do, allows a person to be anything. So I've decided to spend more time pretending to be Love, just like an allegorical character in a Medieval morality play. It's lots of fun, and it feels good - really, really good.
- G.P.
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