October: Only Breathe
As I moved or found stillness I fought off complete silence, fooling myself that I could ground and fly at the same time. I pictured endings, forced results, and crammed myself into shapes to finish. Running as I try to eat the world whole. Recently I’ve noticed I’ve been choking for some time now, but confused it for the new normal.
This year I committed to returning to my regular yoga practice. Once again attending studio yoga classes as a student, which I hadn’t done since before the pandemic. And I relinquished all the classes I taught in exchange for more capacity to give my own personal practice time/energy. It was very needed and I honestly missed it so much!
I rush from work to the yoga studio some days, I cram it in where I can, I wake up early to make sure it’s not missed; but something felt off.
I was chasing a feeling, the release I had first grown addicted to, there were times in my early practice in which I felt I was floating in savasana. I experienced full surrender, practiced earnest self study on my mat, not to brag but my practice was legit.
Somehow I could not get that feeling back and I thought it was a side effect of growth or age.
I would breathe in and out as I exchanged from one posture to the next, but as I did that I was also trying to untangle the dialogue of an awkward exchange earlier in the day or the ongoing list of to dos. I was stuck in the morning in the middle of my 4pm hot yoga class.
I was hardly present. I kept missing the point and was so wildly unaware of it. As someone who has multiple conversations a day about the importance of breath, stillness, and self care with clients and friends, I’ve been a hypocrite the last few months or possibly longer. But to be transparent, I didn’t realize just how wrapped up I actually was.
One day as I rushed after my last massage to make it to class, flustered to find parking, I forced myself into a spot on the side of the street. I hit the curb once and didn’t fully register it, I tried again with more gumption. The second, much harder push scared me. I realized I was so wound up, in my head about the 100 thoughts bouncing off each other, I hadn’t noticed the literal harm I was doing to my car and by extension myself.
I found a different spot and walked to the studio, late for class and in utter shock.
“Where am I?!!” Running through my mind the rest of the day. It freaked me out
The next morning I went to class and said, “what if I just breathe today?”, every time a thought came up, I’d stop it and repeat, “Only Breathe”. Over and over.
With my words as mantra, the class finally closed and funnily I had started to sense that old feeling again. I laughed on the way home.
Because I was humbled. Because I was here.
Goals get loud, plans get loud, life gets loud, the world is very loud, especially these days. There were so many gifts my practice gave me all those years ago, but I had forgotten in my world's loudness that silence and breath make wisdom clearer to hear.
The seasons are changing, the world will start to feel like it yells with holidays and all the what-nots of the country and world at large. Some days I still have a hard time with my breath and that's the truth of any practice we carry. Hard days exist, but I am happy to finally be practicing yoga, the real practice. Only breathing.
Sometimes it is good to forget so we can remember.
