My Back

My Back

But deep down inside we're coverin' up the pain. It's an old thing. It's a soul thing. But it's a real thing. ~ Whos Gonna Help Brother Get Further, Elvis Costello

My back is better. The hurt is gone.

When I first started yoga, I feared for my back. I had sprained it years earlier, and sometimes it still gave me trouble. It wasn’t long before I realized that with every pose, there really wasn’t much that didn’t involve my back. So I was cautious, and it took a lot of encouragement and a lot of baby steps before I got brave enough to progress. I was grateful for the pace and the patience of a class that allowed for this.

Soon my core got stronger which strengthened my back. Not long after, there was a photographer in the studio, and I was given a photograph of myself in a handstand with my back reflected in the mirror.

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Imagination

Imagination

We are stardust, we are golden. We are billion years old carbon. And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.

~ Woodstock, Crosby, Stills & Nash

I’ve been looking at the sky since I was a little girl.

I look up when I leave the house in the morning, and I look up when I arrive home in the evening. All throughout the day, all I have to do is look out the window. Our offices occupy the top floor of a building, so I get to work right in the sky!

Really, if it were possible to keep my eyes open, I’d watch the stars all night.

There is some kind of tie between yoga and the heavens. It’s taken me a while to figure this out, but for me there seems to be a connection between the practice and what’s going on up there. This seems to be what grounds me.

If I try to put this into words, I’d say the sky is limitless, and when I move on the mat, I feel limitless, too.

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Nighttime

Nighttime

You know the nighttime, darling (night and day) is the right time (night and day) to be (night and day) with the one you love, now (night and day) … ~ (Nighttime Is) The Right Time, Ray Charles

Lay down. Take Savasana.

The practice had been hot and strenuous, and at its end the instructor turned off the lights and with these words put us in Savasana, the final resting pose.

I should know by now not to be surprised at the end. I’m aware by now what happens as we draw to a close, how we move from abdominal work to backbends, from folds to twists and, finally, to Savasana.

But on this night, as on so many others, I’m as surprised as ever. Before I know it, it’s over, and I’m startled to hear the instructions to take rest.

But I listen and lie back. I pull the bobby pins from my hair and dismantle my ponytail. I lay out my arms and my legs. I open my hands, palms up on the mat, and I splay out my feet.

You don’t have to do anything now, he said.  Nothing else is happening. Nighttime is starting.

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New Again

New Again

This is for the ones who stand, for the ones who try again, for the ones who need a hand, for the ones who think they can.~ Comes and Goes (In Waves), Greg Laswell

My handstands had left the building.

My yoga schedule was off, and so was my usual inclination to go upside down.

My handstands were missing, and I didn’t know how to find them. And I wondered if rearranging the furniture hadn’t actually been the best idea. After all, the armoire against which I’d practice my handstands had left the building, too. Maybe that was the reason?

It was a Monday night, and I arrived at practice for the first time in a week. I set up my mat and told the instructor what had happened, that my handstands had disappeared. It was not the first time they’d gone missing, and it made me feel back at Square One.

When you ask who’s new tonight, I said,  I may not raise my hand, but I’m the one who’s new again.

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Fierce

Fierce

What’s in a name? That which we call a  rose by any other name would smell as sweet. ~Romeo & Juliet, William Shakespeare

I met a man named Adeoye.

I’d met him before. He works in a store I frequent when I arrive at yoga too early and need a place to go before class.

I didn’t know his name then. He is a beautiful man, with a beautiful voice and smile to match, who serves as the greeter for the store.

And he does a good job greeting. I even remember what he said the first time he greeted me. He paid me a compliment. He told me I looked fierce.

I smiled back and thanked him. It was early on a weekend morning, and I was feeling far from fierce. I was dressed in a hodgepodge outfit with my hair half done. I had blown out my bangs but left the rest to dry in every direction. Wearing barely any makeup, I had on my yoga gear and what I call my supersonic socks, the rugby socks my son had bought while backpacking abroad. Emblazoned with the words,

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UNFOLD YOUR MAT, UNFOLD YOURSELF

UNFOLD YOUR MAT, UNFOLD YOURSELF

It's said that yoga can open up a person. It did that for me, and out came 270 pages! My book is up on Amazon (available here)! It's a collection of my essays, edited into sections of 15 Healing Truths. I am very grateful to my teachers and my fellow yogis and my readers for helping to make this happen. 

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Swimming

Swimming

Rock me on the water. Sister, will you soothe my fevered brow? Yeah, rock me on the water, then maybe I'll remember, maybe I'll remember how. ~ Rock Me On The Water, Jackson Browne

Tonight, I was in a yoga class that took place in what I can only describe as The Twilight Zone.

I call it The Twilight Zone because I literally had no sense of time during the practice. I was so incredibly immersed in the movements that the end snuck up on me, and I only knew it was that time because the instructor dimmed the lights.

We start the practice at the top of our mats, the usual place to start.

We press our feet down and lift our toes up, and we’re instructed to extend our arms up and around and back into place, alternating first one and then the other, until the room is like a pool of backstroking yogis.

And even though we are swimming, the instructor asks us, again, to root down into the earth, to press our feet as if we are instead on dry land, and to lift our toes and glide slowly as if we have many more miles to go.

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Step Up

Step Up

I just take one step closer to you. And even when I've fallen down, my heart says follow through. ~ One Step Closer, Michael Franti

Step to the top of your mats.

This is what the instructor says at the beginning of most every yoga class.

I hear this so much that it’s automatic to simply step to the top when I’m told. I can be finishing a conversation, coming up from a seat or coming down from a stretch. It doesn’t matter. Everything stops, my mind clears, and I step to the top.

But last week, I heard something else.

Step to the top of your mats, the instructor announced. 

And when I did so, my mind, on its own accord, suddenly responded in silence, Reporting for duty!

I’ve never really had a thought surprise me. I usually know what I’m thinking about. But, that day, this response was as automatic as my step to the top. And even though no one could hear my mind speak out, everyone else reported for duty, too.

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Stillness

Stillness

How can I possibly be inconspicuous when my flow is so ridiculous? ~ I’ll Be Around, Cee-lo Green

I was at an evening yoga class with a guest instructor who arrived with a great big welcome, his greeting warming the room, and his smile inviting many in return.

This is a Level Two class, he announced. So, what would you like to work on?

With each answer, he jokingly upped the ante, saying, Oh, hips? That’s a 3.23 class!. Inversions? That’s a 5.67 class! Backbends? That’s a 10.789 class!

He asked us what we wanted and got us laughing when we answered, promising us a high energy class and lifting us with that of his own before landing the room in a quiet meditation with a poem and a chant. 

I was happy to be there, sitting next to a friend who was leaving town and among others I knew as well. I felt cozy as evening fell outside the windows, darkening the room in a stillness filled with the rhythmic voice of the instructor.

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Unwritten Stories

Unwritten Stories

“Today is where your book begins. The rest is still unwritten. ~ Unwritten, Natasha Bedingfield

My son was home for a holiday, and we had the rare occasion to tool around town, having lunch and the chance to walk and shop in the sunshine of the first warm day of the season.

I have no place I have to be, he exclaimed, grateful for such unusual circumstances. There’s nothing I have to be doing right now.

We stopped in a refurbished firehouse that was home to a cool, new shoe store. The interior was designed like an old library, and as we sat down on a plush, oversized couch, I pointed out several shelves of blank books, none of which had covers, words or titles.

Look, I said. None of the books are written. They’re all blank.

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'Tis the Season

'Tis the Season

Five hundred, twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes. How do you measure a year in the life? ~ Seasons of Love, Rent

When is it time to start something new

And when does that something new become part of what you always do? 

Most things seem to have a season, and I’ve always found comfort in the traditions that follow. 

Come spring, I always find myself out on the porch and planting flowers in the pots outside the front door. The summer often means slowing down and more freckles. The fall has Halloween and sweaters and boots and Thanksgiving. I hibernate in the winter, coming out only to celebrate the holidays and New Year’s. 

Like clockwork, the seasons pass, a quarter of each year like a quarter of each hour; the minute hand like our lives, gliding through what it is we do during those times. 

Off schedule and out of the ordinary, I started going to yoga during the fall season a couple years ago, right before my usual winter hibernation.  

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Sisters

Sisters

"Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies." ~ Aristotle

The other night at yoga, we practiced with our eyes shut.

We moved without seeing for 75 minutes. Apparently, it was the night to focus on our Third Eye, the body’s energy center for insight and intuition.

I, myself, am more focused on not falling. And, I have to admit that I open my eyes a few times.

The first time is to make sure I’m not the only one with eyes closed, which, of course, makes me the only one with eyes open. The second time is to check the pose. And a couple more times, I have to say, is because I just can’t help it!

Aside from that, I move deliberately through darkness with those around me, listening to the matching melodies of the instructor’s voice and the music. Periodically, we sit back on our heels and bring our hands to forehead center for a look inside.

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Foundations

Foundations

May you have a strong foundation when the winds of changes shift ~ Forever Young, Bob Dylan

I’ve been taking Rocket yoga for more than a year now.

Three times a week, I go to the same class with the same teacher. She mixes it up, and we fly and invert and lock and lift.

I rarely miss a class, so I figure I’ve practiced Rocket more than 100 times. How is it, then, that I’ve only recently realized that at every practice, we move through a foundational sequence before we take off?

Am I the only one who didn’t know we were putting on the undergarments of our practice before getting dressed for the rest?

Like most young girls, I was taught my first foundation lesson at an early age: to always wear nice underwear in case I’m in an accident and wind up in the hospital.

Foundations can last a lifetime, and that’s why every day, I’ve got on pretty underwear under there. And I think that’s also why we are working on a foundation at Rocket. It’s not just for that day’s practice, but for the rest of our practicing days.

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Catch Me!

Catch Me!

"Upside down. Who's to say what's impossible and can't be found?" ~ Jack Johnson

I was in a very hot yoga practice, and we were more than halfway through. The day had only half begun, I was only half-caffeinated, and we were in Eagle Pose.

For some reason, I’ve been having trouble keeping my balance in Eagle. I try to find a point in front of me to clear my mind, so I don’t even have to think about balancing, but that only makes me think about it all the more, and over I go.

This day in Eagle, my mind is already moving quickly ahead. Usually, we do Eagle on both sides, right and then left, and then right and left again. Sometimes, after the second time around, we move into bound Warrior III and then into Standing Split.

And then I know what’s coming next. In fact, my mind is already there while I am wrapping myself up in Eagle. At that point, for those of us who want to, we get to pop into handstand or, at least, to try.

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Adventure

Adventure

“So come out of your cave walking on your hands and see the world from upside down.” ~ The Cave, Mumford and Sons

The other night, I was at yoga, laying out my mat, unwinding it from its bag and doing the same from my day.

I prefer a spot against the wall, where I can try a few handstands without going overboard. I walk along my mat and talk with those nearby, enjoying the switch from my work day to my yoga night, chatting and pacing and popping into handstands.

And I wonder, where else, really, would this seem normal?

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False Starts

False Starts

ometimes we only think we know where we should be.

The other night, for whatever reason, I was not supposed to be at yoga. I don’t know why, and I never will, but I was not supposed to be there.

That’s not to say I didn’t try. Believe me, I did!

In yoga, we’re told to trust the process. I’ve heard this saying lots of times, but it’s only recently that I’ve begun to understand its meaning. I think it means that we are exactly where we are supposed to be at the time we are there, even if we think we should be elsewhere.

And the other night I got the chance to trust this process.

For whatever reason, my best efforts to get to yoga landed me right back where I started. I don’t know why, and I never will; but, in the end, I think I have to trust that I was just not supposed to be there.

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Embrace

Embrace

It's impossible to be alone at yoga, even if you walk in feeling that way.

It was a weekend morning, and I was getting myself together for yoga. 

On Saturdays and Sundays, I actually shower, wash my hair and put on a little make up before going to yoga. Sounds strange to do so before working out, but this morning routine is what wakes me up.  

I was like this in college, too, even when just studying. I would wake up, shower, dress and sit among my friends who would all be in their sweats. 

My son calls me the Cal Ripken of getting ready for the day. 

I arrive at the studio and wait for the class to start. I lay out my mat in my favorite spot, and slowly the others start to trickle in. 

I love seeing everyone, and a few people come over to chat and catch up. Some are young adults, the ages of my children, some are closer to my age and many are in between. Yoga has introduced me to so many new people. I did not know that practicing would make me part of any kind of community. 

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Confidence

Confidence

I’m supposed to find my swag in yoga.

Really, I never knew what it was or where it was or even that I was supposed to be looking for it.

What I was looking for was how to drop into a backbend from standing, and the instructor was doing his best to help.

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Power

Power

I used to practice in front of mirrors.

I liked it. It reminded me of my long ago dance classes. And it gave me a larger sense of the room because I could look forward and see behind me.

But for awhile now, I’ve been practicing without the mirrors. At first, it was a little unsettling. At one studio, I found myself looking into the eyes of those facing me. In another, I found myself staring at a wall. In still another, I found myself looking out a window onto the busy city streets.

After a while, though, the weirdness went away. Now, it’s not so freaky to look someone in the eye across the room. And the cracks and the slats in the walls and windows serve as my stare points and help me find my balance. The city streets outside the windows are no longer a distraction, and I’ve even watched the rain fly sideways across the floor-to-ceiling windows as I flowed inside while it thundered outside.

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