My
friend KJ will surely be proud of me. She's the one that got me hooked
on yoga, and I confess when she told me a story about crying in yoga, I
remember wanting to roll my eyes. Not at her, but at the collective yoga
whole who touts all manner of mental, emotional, even spiritual
benefits of its practice. Poppycock. Yoga for me has always been--and
ONLY been--simply a good workout. It's an amazing workout. It's a
workout that leaves me so spent (and covered in sweat) that I feel what I
can only describe as hate for my instructor by about 30 minutes into
each class.
In
any case, that's why I go to yoga. I have wholeheartedly resisted the
Other Stuff. Of course, over the months I have certainly come to feel a
more solid sense of self when at yoga, in that it is probably the only
thing I do that inspires such focus on the present moment--and ONLY the
present moment. I worry a lot, so my day to day thoughts tend to drift
forward to all the things I have to do and figure out. I am also
sentimental to a fault, so my day to day thoughts are also heavily
influenced by the past, and by all the analysis that accompanies musings
of regret or "what if."
But
yoga for me is about the immediate present. That very moment. Getting
through a pose. Taking a breath. Hoping the instructor will walk over so
I can whisper "I sort of hate you right now" under my breath. Right now
being the key.
I
didn't have any inkling when I settled into shavasana that I would
almost instantly start to cry. But there I was, a steady stream of warm
tears rolling, well, basically into my ears. Perhaps you could say it
was a few days coming. I'd gone to the lake on Saturday, tissues in
hand, expecting to have a good cry while watching the sunset in honor of
a sad anniversary, but I didn't shed a single tear. Didn't even come
close. Not that last night's episode is necessarily *that* cry, but
regardless, I would have never predicted that a hot, dark room while
laying next to dozens of sweaty bodies, not a single one of which I knew
in the least, would be the place my psyche would suddenly feel such a
paradoxical combination of both vulnerability and safety. I say safety
because while it would have been tough, I could have fought it. But in
that moment, I didn't want to. I couldn't think of a more welcoming
environment for that kind of emotion. And isn't that so odd? I mean,
what is this? I feel like I'm getting into a weird area here.
At
any rate, as soon as I walked out of class, the moment was gone. I was
back in the world. Thinking about things I needed to do for work,
thinking about how my stomach was hurting a bit, thinking about those
license plate stickers that I really need to remember to put on. And so
it goes. Until tomorrow night when I'm back in the yoga studio.
(Although let's hope the crying was a one time thing.)
.
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