yoga

Last night was my first night of yoga school and we were asked to comment on what "yoga" means to each of us. Continually, as we exchanged words around the room, I saw a chorus of nodding heads. "Yes," we seemed to say, "I recognize that, too." It was strange to feel that, perhaps, I truly had just been dropped into the middle of a real community.

On the one hand, this seems obvious. Here were some twenty individuals gathered together with a common purpose. Naturally, we would find common ground among us. But it also felt like more than that. As we shared with each other over the course of the evening, we learned that most of us had spent some time struggling, experienced perhaps enough grief and loss to push us to find a better way to deal with such things. We each found ourselves practicing yoga because it brought some measure of peace to our lives. In which ways this time proved therapeutic or healing varied in their specifics according to the individual addressing the question, but each of us found that our lives had been dramatically improved when we consistently engaged in the practice of yoga.

So, we sat together, holding space with and for each other, because something had called each of us there and was directing us to walk this path at this time. I took a long look around the room, noting that each of us seemed to stare at the others with a bit of wonder. The unspoken question perhaps, "Could it be that we are really not quite so alone?" Of course there are innumerable differences between us, but there was such a spirit of deep humanness and respect, and the sense that each of us aspired to be more fearless and more kind.

As for what yoga means to me, I know that I have spent a lot of time in recent years thinking about the ideas of love and surrender. I have dedicated a lot of energy toward my fierce attempt to walk through the world with an open heart. At times, I think this has left me too open. At other times, I think I have not yet opened enough. It's a delicate balance, I think, and I've certainly not mastered it. I know there is something to this idea of devotion, the act of and willingness to commit to something, to surrender to something, that is beyond the self. In this regard, I think that yoga has already taught me a lot about how to hold open the necessary space in which the heart can do its work. I think I have much still to learn.

For the first time in a long time I feel I am in exactly the right place and doing exactly the right thing. I am committed to walking this path and discovering where it leads. I don't know that I can say the same about anything else in my life right now.