So just hours after I post about how now is not the time for my yoga practice, I go teach my first class in over a month. And suddenly I remember why I've been fighting for this ever since my son was born, why I hold on so tight. Something magical happens when I teach a yoga class, and while these next few years may not be the time to focus all my energy on that magic, to help it blossom into whatever it might become given proper time and attention, neither am I really ready to let it go.
I felt ready to let it go, for a combination of reasons. One of my classes got canceled for the summer, so I was down to just once a week. Because of our week down South, our beach trip, and my sister's wedding last weekend (which I haven't written about, but really should, because it was beautiful), I had to find subs for nearly half of those weekly classes. Then, when I returned after missing a few weeks, I found out that one of my subs had never shown, so my class members were upset, and I had another week where no one showed up in protest (not sure if I was back on the schedule and not wanting to take any chances with another potential no-show sub) and I went home without teaching anything.
So I've been out of touch. Literally. Out of the touch of my hands and knees to the floor in cat and cow, and out of touch with my breath expanding into my back ribcage in forward bends, and out of touch with where my breath goes easily and where it seems to struggle, and how it feels to stretch my spine in six different directions (forward, back, side, side, twist right, twist left, in case you were wondering).
And out of touch with the dim light of a studio in the evening, the day's last rays of sun slipping in between tall brick columns to filter through old windows in an old brick building in the heart of downtown where I walk past unwashed men digging bottles and cans out of city garbage pails to redeem nickels for the booze they hope will redeem them. Where I wave to the Pakistani parking garage toll booth operator, and sometimes stop to talk with him, though I know not his name, nor he mine. Where I pass the bar best known for beer and beef on wick, the first bar I ever visited in this city, years before it was my own, visiting a friend who attended graduate school here, and that never fails to alight a quick thought about the pleasures of beer and beef on wick before I quickly remember that I have both a baby in my belly and a toddler at home, neither of whom are particularly on board with Mama and Daddy doing nothing but drinking beer and eating beef sandwiches for the next hour or so. Where the old man who's been attending my yoga classes for years now always waits outside the studio door and greets me with a smile and a story of his new granddaughter, born premature, but doing better each time I see him. Out of touch with all these things that I have made my own over the past six years, and which I'm not quite ready to walk away from entirely.
So yoga and I, we'll be those friends who can't find the time to catch up as often as we'd like, but stay in touch just enough to keep the friendship alive during long patches of busy, bustling lives full of other obligations. We'll be a marriage where we slip past one another as we hurry-scurry about, not quite able to remember what we used to talk about for hours, but once a week we'll reach for one another under the sheets, and for the time being, that will have to be enough. It will be tiny corner that I keep swept up, even while the rest of my life is a messy blur of chaos, one little place for myself that perhaps has no space to expand, but that I don't fully abandon either. It will be a room of my own. Even if I very rarely visit.
I felt ready to let it go, for a combination of reasons. One of my classes got canceled for the summer, so I was down to just once a week. Because of our week down South, our beach trip, and my sister's wedding last weekend (which I haven't written about, but really should, because it was beautiful), I had to find subs for nearly half of those weekly classes. Then, when I returned after missing a few weeks, I found out that one of my subs had never shown, so my class members were upset, and I had another week where no one showed up in protest (not sure if I was back on the schedule and not wanting to take any chances with another potential no-show sub) and I went home without teaching anything.
So I've been out of touch. Literally. Out of the touch of my hands and knees to the floor in cat and cow, and out of touch with my breath expanding into my back ribcage in forward bends, and out of touch with where my breath goes easily and where it seems to struggle, and how it feels to stretch my spine in six different directions (forward, back, side, side, twist right, twist left, in case you were wondering).
And out of touch with the dim light of a studio in the evening, the day's last rays of sun slipping in between tall brick columns to filter through old windows in an old brick building in the heart of downtown where I walk past unwashed men digging bottles and cans out of city garbage pails to redeem nickels for the booze they hope will redeem them. Where I wave to the Pakistani parking garage toll booth operator, and sometimes stop to talk with him, though I know not his name, nor he mine. Where I pass the bar best known for beer and beef on wick, the first bar I ever visited in this city, years before it was my own, visiting a friend who attended graduate school here, and that never fails to alight a quick thought about the pleasures of beer and beef on wick before I quickly remember that I have both a baby in my belly and a toddler at home, neither of whom are particularly on board with Mama and Daddy doing nothing but drinking beer and eating beef sandwiches for the next hour or so. Where the old man who's been attending my yoga classes for years now always waits outside the studio door and greets me with a smile and a story of his new granddaughter, born premature, but doing better each time I see him. Out of touch with all these things that I have made my own over the past six years, and which I'm not quite ready to walk away from entirely.
So yoga and I, we'll be those friends who can't find the time to catch up as often as we'd like, but stay in touch just enough to keep the friendship alive during long patches of busy, bustling lives full of other obligations. We'll be a marriage where we slip past one another as we hurry-scurry about, not quite able to remember what we used to talk about for hours, but once a week we'll reach for one another under the sheets, and for the time being, that will have to be enough. It will be tiny corner that I keep swept up, even while the rest of my life is a messy blur of chaos, one little place for myself that perhaps has no space to expand, but that I don't fully abandon either. It will be a room of my own. Even if I very rarely visit.
gorgeous.
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