Finding the balance

I went to my yoga class today. This is significant only because I haven't been to it in almost exactly one year. It's the same class that it was before I left, with all but a few of the same students, though in a slightly different location; my teacher has started her own studio with perhaps the best name ever - Om Town Yoga - and is renting the space directly next door to the dance studio that used to house her classes. It's a much better use of that space, as the previous tenant was a coffee shop that was apparently never open - or at least never open at any time that I might have been able to darken its door.

The new studio is stunningly gorgeous with lush purple walls and dark wooden floors. The main room is separated from the entrance by a glass brick wall and there is a bench with cubbies underneath for shoes and backpacks and cell phones. Standing as if a sentry guarding the entrance to the sanctuary is a full-scale model skeleton, reminding all who enter what it is that allows us to move into all of the positions we're about to be led through.

You'll notice I said "my" yoga class, not just yoga class or "a" yoga class. Even though I gave it up a year ago when I started at Brenneke (I couldn't justify being away from home yet one more night every week in addition to all the time I was spending in class), I've always known it was there waiting and that I'd go back as soon as I was able. And indeed, I passed my last practical yesterday, turned in my exit interview, and this morning checked the web site to find that the new session of classes started... this week. Today.

So back in I jumped. To an advanced class. After a year of no regular yoga. And amazingly... it was just fine. In fact, it was better than fine. My downward dog was the best ever - strong legs, easy wrists, heels flat on the floor. Ardha chandra-asana was appropriately half-moony, steady, and balanced. I even managed to stay awake during savasana, letting my mind wander, as it does at some point in every session, back to my first yoga class in Columbus and my first beloved teacher Craige, who I still dearly miss six years later. I'm very tired and I will be sore tomorrow, but I know it will be a good sore.

In addition to the memories my body had of the yoga poses, I also surprised myself by remembering the Anusara invocation that we sing in Sanskrit at the beginning of every session:

Om Namah Shivaya Gurave
Saccidananda Murtaye
Nisprapancaya Shantaya
Niralambaya Tejase

Translation:
I offer myself to the Light, who is the True Teacher
within and without (the teacher of all teachers),
Who assumes the forms of
Reality, Consciousness and Bliss,
Who is never absent and is full of peace,
Independent in its existence,
It is the vital essence of illumination.

Om.

It's a rather strange feeling as I begin picking up the pieces I put down a year ago, seeing if and where they fit into this new life, whether and how they work for this new me. I know that some things will be a better fit; with my new body awareness born of a year of intense study of the muscular and skeletal systems, I'm able to make minor adjustments to yoga poses that let me go much more deeply into them, allow me to root and establish a balance that I just didn't have before. On the flip side, I'm also finding that some things absolutely don't work for me anymore, that they chafe and make me very uncomfortable. There's a dissonance, a vibration that was certainly always there, but that is now amplified to a point where maintaining the safe and easy status quo no longer feels safe or particularly easy.

In order to accomplish what I did in this last year, I had to push away what was comfortable, to ease up on responsibility, and to allow myself to turn inward and focus on... me. It wasn't easy, either for myself or for my family and friends to whom I often waved to in passing as I ran off to yet another weekend of coursework. But it did help me learn what was true... in yoga-speak, it strengthened my core. Now that I once again have uncommitted time, I find myself rushing headlong back into focusing outward... scheduling long-delayed activities for the kids, planning work on the house, committing myself to projects on other peoples' deadlines. And that's great, but I need to be careful so as not to rebound too far in that direction, losing the intention and internal focus that has been so hard-won.

Last night, as I settled my heels to the floor and pushed up from the ground into my sit bones, I recognized that the strength of knowledge, the new eyes I now see through, will be useful in keeping my transition back into the once-familiar routines from becoming simply a return and a forgetting. Nothing has changed... and everything has changed. And now I know that all it takes is a subtle shift to find my balance.