Walk, Corina says

Walk, Corina says.

OK, I say.

Corina smiles. She is encouraging me.

I smile back. I am encouraging myself.

I slide one foot forward.

She shakes her head.

Mind you, I have not actually shifted my weight. Officially, I have not taken a single step.

Corina comes to stand beside me.

Stand, she says.

I have recently learned that I have terrible posture. Carefully, I arrange myself. I feel like a duck.

Stand natural, Corina says.

I stand upright.

She lifts her smock. Look how I stand, she says. Look how you stand.

I thought that we were standing just the same, that we only look different because she is curvy and I am a stick.

No, she says.

This is how I naturally stand, she says. She has a lovely s-shape, solid and dainty.

See how you naturally stand? she says. I am upright, but still my hips rest more forward than hers, my shoulders more back. My S-shape is there, but it is flatter than hers.

When I walk forward, I shift like this, Corina says. Sinuously, her S-shape changes. When I walk back, I don’t shift so much, because my relation (she means chest to hips to feet) is already there, she says.

Corina continues: When you walk forward, One Heart, you must shift differently than me, because you are in different relation. When you walk back, you need to shift even more. She demonstrates, and I copy her. Now her S-shape is exaggerated, but my S-shape is just right.

I look right. But I still feel like a duck. We move on.

What about lifting my energy, drawing it up from my center? I ask. Teachers often tell women to do that.

Not for you, Corina says. You are already too up. Draw down.

We must do different things to achieve the same posture, because we are starting from different natural stances, she says.

My heart perks up its ears.

Last May when I left my lesson with Corina, I felt quintessentially inadequate. Are there some people who are just so wrong they can never make it right? I wondered.

You have to be careful with a question like that lest it spread like a puddle in rain. Your reason must build a dike around your heart, or soon you will be doubting your Self. But reason is not always stronger than the heart’s attraction to the dangerous stranger. Then what?

Reason can be buttressed by evidence.

Corina stands next to me, her S-shape and mine.

I see.

My soul smiles. This I can work with.