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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Author's note:Hi, I'm Helen. Welcome to Lifted ~ I write to lift myself up. Archives
June 2021
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