Opening up the Telescope

"What a curious feeling!" said Alice. "I must be shutting up like a telescope!"
-Lewis Carroll from 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'

Today's Ode to Practice: stretching. Yes, just the plain old stretching part of yoga. Ask someone who has never done yoga and has no interest in it, what yoga is about and they often answer something like, "Yoga? That's like stretching, right?"

Well, no, not really, but stretching certainly happens during the process of exploring an asana practice.

Right now, I feel like Alice in her telescope analogy. My body shut up completely during "crisis mode" and now that it feels like we're tidying up the mess, I'm looking to figure out how to open up the telescope once again.

Owl once suggested that maybe all the fiddling and fussing on the surface of our practice that we do in the early years of exploring it, protects us from the depth we're not yet ready for. I'm wondering if my intervening tightness is not similar in a way. Possibly the body is wiser than I give it credit for. I can only process so much at one time. Perhaps I store the rest in the body for later assimilation.