on movement

I moved in yoga class tonight. Stretched, held, breathed, grunted, made faces, and, here and there, felt flow. Movement, breath, thought, non-thought, and simply being in that space, now, are what yoga is all about.

After class, the teacher told me I had a good practice. She said it was good to watch me.

I have new movement now: that of confidence, recognition, gratitude. My goal of one day doing yoga teacher training in India, of being a yoga instructor myself, seems to have that extra iota of validation that of late it (and I) was lacking.

Tomorrow, I am moving in another way. I am returning to the landscape I love so deeply, the red rocks and brilliant sky and wind-tousled pines of southern Utah.

In addition to excitement and curiosity, I feel trepidation, dread, and sadness at this movement. I see my pattern. Escape. Movement. Reaching toward something, and perhaps running from something else (what, I have yet to decipher).

Fear grips me and sends forth a volume of tears, some of which I attempted to stifle during practice tonight. During the movement of yoga tonight, I cried. The tears were for me, for this place, for confusion, for lack, for love, for loss. This place has been good to me, it has been challenging, it has been hard, it has been unexpected. It has grown on me. Am I giving up on it too soon, yet again? Or am I simply returning to what my heart knows is my deepest truth?

During the movement of yoga tonight, I also had an epiphany. I can always come back. I can dance with movement this summer, with abandon, and enjoy every second of every day (or least make my best effort). I can walk in the land I love, and marvel at its unending beauty, its ruggedness, its deep simplicity. I can be in the moment, and I can stick to it and realize it.

There is a freedom in movement, after all. As there also is in staying still. The latter of which may still be the lesson I most need to learn.

on movement

a room with a view

I just attended yoga class (hot vinyasa, baby--who's your momma now?) at the new building where my yoga studio is, and must say I was quite impressed. The old place was tiny, stuffy, and windowless. Certainly made for a lot of sweating during class, which was good to a degree, but I feared hitting my fellow yogis in the face with an ill-flung foot or arm during some poses.

The new place is fabulous. Large...airy...and views to die for. Huge windows line two walls, affording body-centering and mind-calming vistas of the local mountains, bathed in sunset light if you take the evening classes as I do. Meditation altars are set up around the room...candles flicker on the windowsills...incense tickles the nostrils...music plays, a little too loudly in my ears since I placed my mat right by the speakers, but I managed. I recalled how inspiring and necessary a view is to life. I surround myself with gorgeous natural vistas where I live, and have done so for many years now. I find them balm for my soul, and I imagine most others must as well.

And yet there are millions who choose to live in windowless boxes, enveloped by views of cinderblock and exhaust fumes. (And when I say choose, I use the term loosely, in the greatest stretching of the word's meaning possible. There is always a choice--it just sometimes seems like an untenable one, a fact with which I am quite familiar!) I wonder how truly happy those people are? I'm sure many of them are happy--I'm just wondering how many.

I have to quote Everett Ruess here again:

"I prefer the saddle to the streetcar and star-sprinkled sky to a roof, the obscure and difficult trail, leading into the unknown, to any paved highway, and the deep peace of the wild to the discontent bred by cities." --from his last-known letter, sent to his brother Waldo in 1934.

And that's 'bout all I have to say on the matter. Hoorary for views.

a room with a view