Lotus Seed 1 by © Kuan Chong Ng | Dreamstime.com

One of the best yoga studios in the world is around the corner from me, and I used to go regularly.  Since March, however, I’ve been resisting it.  I wanted my mornings for writing, and by the time the afternoon rolled around, I was too weary to go.  I did suffer from a flu that had me miss classes I’d especially signed up for, but what is my resistance to going now?  I fear I am so far out of touch, but I know that this studio is full of non-judgmental students, students who are very much concerned with their practice.  I’m heavier than a few months back, which makes me body-conscious. I know, as we all do, that getting there (to a class, to a studio, even to a restaurant) is the hardest part; once you’re there, you wonder what made you stay away.

Is it that I’m moving so I don’t want to miss this studio and its teachers and its students too much?  That I stay away so I can let go?  The sadness of loosing something is enormous.  I fear the loss, the change.  I was lucky enough to find a teacher who directed me to her teacher, a blessing I sometimes forget.  When I met my principal teacher, her teacher, I felt aligned immediately.  I have only felt that way in some auditoriums, just before I know I am going to see some good film, theatre or listen to a reading.  It is a sense of identity, knowing, oh, I’m one of this crowd, I know how to do this, I belong here.  It’s a sense of recognizing, I’ve been doing this all my life.

That’s funny sentence to write when I am very much a beginning student who avoids arm balances and headstands, but to sweep up one’s arms in a salutation to the sun seems familiar.  Maybe I speak of two different things: yoga and sitting in an auditorium filled with a buzz.  Maybe the buzz is the connection, the mutual energy that film-goers and yoga practitioners share, the knowing that one is a participant in something bigger than the individual.

I cannot bear to promise I will go to yoga today.  I think I might, though.

Later: I did.