When I practice yoga I’m either one of two places. The first, out in space. Blackness all around me, floating amongst sparks of light, looking at our planet far below. The second, I am a tadpole swimming upstream in the creek behind the house I grew up in.
When I am in space, I am not an astronaut. I don’t wear a space suit or have a loopy line connecting me to a rocket. I don’t have a mini intercom in my helmet that broadcasts another person’s voice into my ear. It’s completely silent out there, in the stillness. It’s bliss and comfort all at once. It’s interconnectivity and wholeness. It’s time stood still and it’s everyone I love safe on the planet beneath. These are strange feelings because I can’t necessarily know that everyone’s okay while I am floating. Yet, I simply do. The calmness absorbs my mind and it’s like dark matter. I don’t even know what dark matter is. But I feel it. Being a tadpole is different. It’s being so completely alive that every skin cell vibrates against the cool rush of water. It’s feeling my whole life all at once. Running as a child, the smell of wet grass, bristles of fir trees, paper-wrapped sandwiches, belting Abba, folded into the corner of my Dad’s big, blue chair. Instead of time stopped, it’s time in warp speed. Thoughts always float in and out, no matter if I’m swimming in the creek or floating in space. In a memory that feels incredibly distant, a monk taught me that thoughts should be treated like balloons. Simply allow them to float on by, like clouds moving in the sky. In a way though, thoughts open up new clam-shells of awareness. A new thought sparks a new feeling and so on. It makes me wonder about all the things I have not thought of, all the alternate realities left unconsidered. Windmilling my arms and placing my hands down around my feet, practicing yoga makes me think of all the people who have helped me. The woman who held my face and forced me to come back after all I wanted to do was give up, who since has beat cancer. The man whose laugh and childlike freedom gives me hope despite everything bad in this world. All the people who are kind, who encompass the entirety of the word. The people who teach me, inside classrooms, things that cement what I learn outside those four walls. Family that will always listen when I give them the chance to hear what I feel. Yoga is balance in gratefulness, no matter if I am floating in space or swimming upstream.
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On Valentine’s Day, I accepted my next move in life. I committed to serving in the Peace Corps as a secondary English teacher in Zambia.
One of my fears is running away. It scares me to think people might see me as abandoning everything and everyone. Of course, this fear is driven by my own self, my own doubt. It scares me to think my coping mechanism is isolation. Am I running away from my life? In the back of my head this question sticks hard like chewing gum. There are two conflicting feelings within me. One, is the idea of running away and two, the idea that this choice hums in perfect tune with my heart and mind. Becoming a Peace Corps Volunteer falls gracefully in line with my life’s journeys thus far. I can look back and finally understand the time I’ve spent away from family as preparation for this next great adventure. My past serves as a template for why. Now that I’ve seen it, becoming a volunteer, I cannot unsee it. Nothing else makes sense anymore. Not graduate school, not any city, not the loneliness of being on my own at home. At least not for right now. The nagging loams big though. Am I making this decision because of my fears? Because of the solitude in my life? Because I am afraid of taking the concrete next steps towards a career? Because I am still so unsure of who I am? I am, I am, I am. Composed of a subject and verb, centered on myself taking action. Taking action for what, for whom? Me, me, me? The Peace Corps will also be a lonely experience, but it will be different. This would not be about me. It would be a journey of community love. I listened to a TED talk recently about empowering young women. There is self love, romantic love, and community love. Community love has the power to lift you up, support you, and serve as a mentor. Being apart of a community that could use my service, my independent, sensitive and soulful self - giving myself wholly to a place and the people for two years - will demand me to give them all I’ve got. I spent 2018 battling against who I am. Despite my best efforts that year, towards the end I came back to myself and listened to my intuition. The Peace Corps is exactly that, a conscious decision to follow what’s deep within me. Here’s to being a part of something big. 2019 is the year of living large. “We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” ― Joseph Campbell |
Author's note:Hi, I'm Helen. Welcome to Lifted ~ I write to lift myself up. Archives
June 2021
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