11 August 2024 · Yoga
A letter to my yoga practice
Dear yoga practice,
You are the invisible thread of my sanity.
You take my rumination, my single-mindedness, and drop it in a pool of awareness. You say look at all the things, not just one thing, and see how big this space is.
If I’m sad, you knock down the first domino of gladness.
If I’m angry, you give permission to my heat, then you put the fire out.
If I’m stressed, you put a lid on it.
If I’m tired, you educate me on the boundary between wakefulness and sleep.
You ask for nothing but my presence, and even that you’re not attached to. You don’t need me to be any different: smarter, skinnier, or more successful. You tell me that life is an ever-evolving process and that you’re exactly where you need to be.
You take me by the hand, in the break of the morning, or the turn of the afternoon, and we slip into largeness, a place – or is it no place? – where my worries, my plans, my this and that cease to exist.
You need no promises, but I’ll make some anyway.
I promise to regard this practice as sacred, never a chore and always a gift. I promise to share you the way I wish to receive you, and to remember that those who haven’t met you aren’t far behind. I promise to come back after I’ve been away, and to forgive myself for the absences. I promise to stand on the clouds and lie on the earth. To love wholeheartedly and to live embodied.
I promise, each time I meet you anew, to remember these things, not in my mind but in my bones.
My dear yoga practice, I bow my head to the divine in you.
— M