A Poem for Warrior II
To cultivate a self and not a selfie is a journey of peeling off the layers of your masks, going within and showing up as your most authentic self
When I wrote the poem for Warrior II, I immediately imaged a magazine cover or ad with a perfect photo of a perfect women in a perfect spot on a perfect mountain, perfectly alone and at peaceā¦
And I thought of Warrior II as more than a pose, but almost an entity that had been appropriated, kidnapped, hollowed out and presented in a two-dimensional way. And I wanted to rescue Warrior II the way I want to rescue myself from the depths of cover ups, self-consciousness, and bouts of inner turmoil I have navigated most of my life.
I love practicing the movement called Warrior II. Each time I take this shape, I feel it a little more in new parts of my body that have awoken ā like my inner thighs and chronically tight hip flexors. Each time I think to myself, Ahā¦ finally I am starting to learn how to practice Warrior II. And take a step towards embracing the power of my most authentic and vulnerable self.
And so, at a point in my life when I have begun to reckon with what it means to be here as an embodied human
with the ocean-like cycles of a women
who has made love, birthed, bled,
and who has learned what it means to be a warrior
who fights with grace, gratitude, and equanimity,
who is willing to put away all forms of likes and subscribes and notifications and bells
so that I can be nothing
and everything
with my family,
with my garden,
with my neighbors,
with the squirrels,
with the night sky
full of wishes
and to come home to myself
even if sometimes it looks like a temple and other times like an abandoned shed by the side of the roadā¦
I am honored to share with you this poem for Warrior IIā-
Warrior II
By Corie Feiner
Warrior II, I want to rescue you from
the perfectly glossy pages of magazine ads
selling exotic holidays, insurance companies,
finance managers, kitchen air vents,
and even fast-food burger joints.
You have saved us in so many waysā
from the wrath of tables and chairs
from the slouch of desk job servitude
from the belief that we were not worth
fighting for.
You have opened our hips, expanded
our lungs, and taught us to balance
effort with ease, ferocity with a deep
tenderness. Warrior II,
I love you enough to take you back
to a place where there is no perfection,
just progress, where there is no gravity,
just grace, where there is no camera asking us
to be an image of ourselves.
Donāt you, too, long to come home?
Sanskrit Name: Virabhadrasana II
All paid subscribers can listen to an audio version of Warrior II here.
And because I am a working artist, if you are able to upgrade to paid, it would really support my work and fund my audio recordings and my online store of poetry posters and prints I am working on launchingā hopefully in the fall. If not, I hear you, too, and it my pleasure to have you here.
If you would like to learn more about how to practice Warrior II, you can check out this tutorial.
If you want to learn more about the mythology behind the warrior poses, you can go here.
And here are some beautiful and thoughtful yoga Substack publications that I highly recommend:
What I Taught in Yoga This Week
I always think about the balance between strength and ease when it comes to Warrior II. This fiercely stable pose that also opens and expands, mind and body.
I adore this concept, rescuing Warrior II the way it has rescued us from that same laundry list of attractions and distractions. I still remember the first time I finally felt that "power in the back leg" that Adriene calls out. Like a steel rod showing me I AM a warrior afterall.