Tuesday, February 5th: Yoga Class

My thoughts are ruffled and crashing like waves on a windy beach.  Each idea jumps over the previous, pushing emotions' buttons, playing me.  I'm looking for a calmer self, the part that watches above, below or somewhere in all this chaos, but wherever this self is, if it even exists, it keeps getting subsumed by an urgent need to add an item to the grocery list, or plan what I will say to my 7th grader about his grades, or wonder if turned my phone off. 

Through the noise, I walk into the studio.  It's morning so the sun shines in chunky blocks on gleaming blond floors. I try to notice.  My shoulders hunch forward, like my heart is waiting for a blow.  I try to notice. An idea for a lesson plan for tomorrow shoots through my head.  I try to notice and let it go.

The class starts hard:  planks, body shaking, arms feel like sticks trying to heft the weight of a body full of stories. There's no room in this head now for anything but breath that shakes through my body. 

I hear the inhalations and exhalations of other bodies.  My own breath is a whisper, a message from some other self that exists below, above, beyond.  Finally here.