My Yoga Muse Has A Lot To Say

I am a 42 year old mother, wife, studio owner and yogi but if somebody really wanted to get to know me it would be most immediate to climb inside my head while I am practicing yoga. First of all, I love yoga. I teach yoga, I teach teachers how to teach yoga. I write about yoga. I talk about yoga and I practice yoga. Every day that I can, I practice yoga. Sometimes soft and sometimes hard. Right now, at the point of life I am in with two yoga studios, three children (one who is young enough that she still does not sleep through the night, one that is currently obsessed with The Beatles and WOW, a totally addictive computer game, and one that is a stunning preteen totally unaware of her brilliance and beauty), two cats, two parents who live underneath me in an in-law apartment and a husband who is pouring himself into his own business to make it fly, I usually choose the hard. The sweat is merciful and the intensity is what my body and mind needs to release its bitchiness, woes, and sorrows.

After a hot and demanding yoga class complete with hundreds of downward facing dogs, plank poses, wheels and handstands, I finally begin to dissolve my relentless mind and let my body and all of its stories and misunderstandings melt onto the floor. It is only then, in my own personal puddle of sweat, that I begin to understand who I am and what I am clinging to. Isn't it ironic that clarity and softness comes to me in a room heated to 90 degrees after an hour or so of my body and mind stretching, reaching, breathing, folding, arching, jumping, trusting, opening and closing?

One of the biggest wake up calls I got at the end of a yoga class was when I heard the teacher say, “We all create our own suffering.” I create my own suffering? What kind of new age simplified concept is that? And yet when I heard him speak these words while I laid on the floor completely chilled out in corpse pose, I felt a familiar tingle in my belly. I felt an immediate reaction to truth and I knew my teacher's words were right on. Suffering is not something that is done to me by others or by circumstance but rather suffering is my own creation. I can choose how to be in every situation in my life. I can choose to be fine with the fact that today I must pick the discarded cheesy macaroni up off the floor under my daughter's high chair, that I must empty the overflowing cat box, and face a mountain of laundry. Today I can anticipate getting into and driving my own car that I make a hefty payment on each month and recoil as it's interior glares at me with too many empty water bottles, strewn pennies and papers, and various elements of my children such as mismatched flip flops, lollipop sticks, coloring books, topless magic markers, and the remains of a melted cookie baking inside the black fabric of Sadie's car seat. Today I can go into bitterness and resentment as I realize that, yet again, I am too busy to clean up something as basic and necessary to my own life as my car.

I can choose to whine and feel sorry for myself or I can choose to be present in every situation of my life. Being present for daily life does not consist of judging but is instead made up of slowing down and listening. Listening to myself, listening to the cues of my environment, listening to my loved ones and listening to others. Not reacting. Not going into automatic pilot. I can analyze, discern, slice and dice every moment and try to determine how everything and everyone is going to impact me. What kind of deal, good or bad, will I get out of this situation and what will others think of me? What will my yoga students think of me if they catch a glimpse inside my messy car in the parking lot of my studio? What will strangers in the supermarket parking lot think of me if they happen to glance through windows smeared with my toddlers finger prints? I can choose to go into dread and shame or I can choose to not prejudge each situation that comes my way and just go with it.

I can drive my car today, put the sun roof down and the sunglasses on and get where I need to go. I can enjoy the humming and singing of my three children to The Beatles “Hey Jude.” I can take in the feisty spirit of my one year old as she smiles at me with one dimple when I look at her through my rear view mirror and immediately blows a spit bubble to make her nine year old brother laugh. I can also take in that my emo preteen daughter still looks forward to running errands with me and talking about life in-between the text messages that are coming and going, fast and furious underneath her nail bitten fingers.

If I take a moment to slow down and let my immediate reaction of loathing for myself and my messy car dissipate, I take a deep breath and begin to know the truth. The truth is not dramatic but it is beautiful in its own simple way. The truth is that my car will get picked up when I have the time. The truth is that when I pick it up it will be on a day when I actually have the time to do so and I will not feel rage or resentment inside, only pleasure and satisfaction as I take on the task.

The other truth is that my Honda will get messy again. Yoga teaches us that life goes on. Trying to control life is like harnessing a lightening bolt.