Balance

I've been flirting with yoga for many years. In acting school, at 7am, Lisa the ballet/allignment teacher took us through a genius routine that I had on tape and I wish I still had: a combination of ballet, yoga, pilates and meditation that set us up for a day of being centered and exploring character and our inner psyches and outer muscles. It hurt and I loved it. Then, living in the Village, I found the Hatha Yoga center on 12th Street and went every day for a while. It wasn't really that strenuous physically, but I found a calm there I knew I craved. In Jersey City for a while I found a nice studio on Grove Street I went to a few times. I'm pretty sure I still have about $50 in sessions there to use. Then I moved south and bailed on yoga. Not that I was ever really a devotee. I was more of a runner who used yoga on off days. I never developed a practice, although I felt like I should, or that it suited me. Here in Nashville, I bought a road bike, a Cannondale, and began to ride for an hour, then two, then sometimes three. My legs got stronger, the desire to run waned, and then I found a yoga studio down the street, only 2 blocks away and I went a few times to a Vinyasa class. But it was this thing called Hot Yoga that intrigued me. I like sweating. I'll admit it. I like to know if I'm working--a physical outward manifestation of the inward grunt. I don't like to walk away clean from exercise and I will never understand a woman who comes to the gym in pink or in makeup or jewelry. Give me dripping wet grey and black, hair pulled back tight, sopping slick skin. That's an hour well spent. So hot yoga really drew me in and there I was, finding a studio in Nashville that specialized in this zany thing. And I went. Every day for a week. And I was hooked. And now I do my best to go as much as I can, and I still ride the bike. I swap off. And my body is happier than its ever been. I feel strong and it calms me.

But today I had The Best Yoga Class Ever. And I had to rejoice. I'd worked to my edge. I felt like I wanted to throw up a few times. I had to bail on a few poses. Sit in child pose. Breathe. But I kept going once I got my balance back. Then at the end, when in meditation pose, breathing in and out, our teacher, Leia, I think, who has this gentle calming voice and reminds me of a rock climber in Boulder with a body I'd kill for and I'm sure she's younger than me but I love her class, Leia had us breathing and she was talking about the soltice and the darkening hour and preparing for our greatness and possibility and deepening our intenion--

--let me interrupt here. I am a person who this language, this jargon, made me cringe. I did the Landmark Forum. I drank the juice for 3 days and got a lot out of it and walked around NYC for a month like a blissed out zombie until I woke up and thought--holy cow, they had me drink the juice and now I'm talking in jargon phrases that don't fit in my mouth. I cringe at hippie shit like this, even though in my heart of hearts, I am a hippie rockclimbing chick living in Boulder, CO or Santa Fe, NM totally centered with long blonde hair strumming a dulcimer....too many Joni Mitchell CDs from my youth--so yeah, any of this 'intention' and "possibility" bullshit just makes my skin crawl...until it ... well, makes my skin crawl in a kind of amazing and good way---

and as I was there breathing and relaxing the spent body I live in, a wave of Great Emotion came up and I found myself breathing harder and longer and deeper than I ever have and, do you know that twinge you get in your chest sometimes in breathing that feels like a combination of grief and growing pains and love and longing and deep sadness and blissed out pulling? I had that. And tears fell down my face and there I was in a freaking hot yoga class on a Tuesday late afternoon in East Nashville having a catharsis on my back, with my intention of "letting Love come into my life in whatever way it comes" and I felt that, felt that bigness of Love, come in and fill me and I almost moaned outloud, but was worried that the guy behind me who was wearing only shorts (and that kind of, honestly, grossed me out) would misread my moan. And then I was back to earth, still emotional, still grateful, and still moved, but my toes and fingers were tied to me and I wasn't spinning so much.

And I left that class dripping with more sweat than I've ever had come off my pores and came home and loved on my dog and made myself a nice dinner and talked to a few friends and did nothing of real consequence. I didn't change the world. I didn't change my life. I wrote nothing sacred or amazing or even insightful. I just listened to the sound of the chimes in the wind, the heater billowing up from the basement, the dehumidifier hum.

And I realize now, hours later, I have not felt this calm in a long time.

So many moments of our days are like unseen fingers trying to push us off our center of balance, challenge our confidence. We fight them constantly. Fight each other. Fight ourselves. Its nice to know there's an hour and half that will right that imbalance. For less than the cost of a movie.