Primero de febrero
February 1st. Today is the 28th anniversary of one of the most important days of my life: the day I discovered yoga.
Today, "yoga" looks like working on editing and writing assignments in bed at sunrise, reading this long (but so worth it) personal essay by Anne Patchett, being served organic shade-grown black coffee from this land by my beloved, eating a piece of cold pizza for brunch, taking a shower and a foot bath in the middle of the day, and now writing this before walking to town to pick up my daughter and her best friend from their unschool.
Today, yoga looks like two black cats on the unmade bed, one stretched out and one curled up, and me.
Today, yoga looks like breathing, and realizing I'm breathing, and feeling grateful to be alive and therefore breathing more deeply and unapologetic run-on sentences. A potent breeze blowing. Sounds of birds and boat motors in the distance. Mercury retrograde once again. Unapologetic fragments.
Today, yoga looks like awareness of deadlines and grammatical correctness and yet choosing to take the time to journal and blog—just because. The paid work will get done, too. The work of the heart mustn't be neglected.
I haven't done formal yoga practice every day since February 1, 1993, but I have been doing informal practice every day and every moment since then, since my birth, since my first lifetime.
With the passage of time, I see more and more how yoga is everything and everything is yoga.
Everything is changing, and change is everything.
God is change, Octavia E. Butler wrote. That resonates. The universe is change. Life is change. Death is change. The ants go marching, so many of them, so organized in their search for and transport of crumbs.
I am 40 (plus 8 months). Sometimes that seems impossible. Forty sounds old, or does forty sound young? It's all relative.
I am grateful to have discovered yoga so early in life. I am grateful to have discovered yoga at all. I am grateful for where the practice of yoga and mindfulness have brought me: to a remote hillside overlooking a lake and her volcanoes, overlooking this place I had never heard of or set eyes upon prior to 2009, prior to my Guatemalan rebirth which has captivated me and won't let go. I am grateful for this breath. I am grateful for love. I am grateful for you.
