Preparing Myself

Today was my day to do gardening work. In our garden we have a plot for raspberries.
When we bought the raspberry plants I thought it would be a good idea to buy a variety that gave fruit late in the season. My reasoning was that we could then have raspberries most of the summer, as we could buy the early variety when it came out in the stores. Well my reasoning really didn’t work out, as there were only a few times we got a good harvest because the plants bloomed way too late in the year.
So my job today was to go out and dig up all those plants and replant new plants of an earlier fruiting variety. Our raspberry plot is 18 ft. X 5 ft., so I knew I had a job in front of me. Luckily the ground was wet, so digging wasn’t so bad. But the roots, the roots, the roots. I have become quite acquainted with roots. I can now appreciate B.K.S. Iyengar’s wording “root your foundation to the floor”. When I got the roots out and turned over all the sod, I started to compare this to a practice. I was preparing the soil for new plants, as I prepare my body to do a backbend. First you prepare before you plant a new seed. So I got the tiller out and went back and forth, making sure that the ground was broken up enough for the new plants. When I relate that back to my practice, I prepare myself for backbends by doing poses that extend the thighs, open the chest and shoulders. What I learned from that whole experience is that life is an exploration; no matter what I’m doing, it is an exploration.