Up To Me

Suddenly summer came, without warning or preparation. I slept with the doors and windows open, legs and arms flung to the four corners of the bed. The season hangs above the foothills with deliberation; in the evening the sunset spills across the sky like paint. Every thing and every one seems to be moving closer to the ground with the heat, slower and quieter. There have been a few mountain lions wandering down towards town, one in the alley at 1 in the afternoon across the street from where I'm living. I can't help but feel as though I'm trespassing when I'm hiking, or biking home late at night, thinking of what might be watching me. There is a secret excitement about knowing we are still challenged on the food chain.

I've moved into the apartment above Alice and Bill's house and am feeling out a new routine of early mornings with the boys, late afternoons with the girls and in between practicing yoga and working at the studio. Reading a few books in the transitions, some good and others great (E.B. White essays and Joan Halifax's The Fruitful Darkness), and trying to find my writing voice again. Having the space to live in and call my own for the next few weeks is wonderful. I feel so welcome in their home, and knowing I am needed and wanted there is wonderful, too.

(i've been listening to tons of bob dylan lately, and certain songs i've never really liked have suddenly endeared themselves to me, "up to me" being one, which is where i got the subject for this post.)

I've been taking few yoga classes this week, and when I do take them they feel juicy and delicious. I took HPF with Trista a few days ago, and it was almost perfect. Sweet, strong, moving. She reminded us throughout the class to come back to our breath. She said a few times if we didn't have that deep, cleansing breath in our postures we were missing the point.

I confessed to Richii Jai Jai this morning my fear of going upside down in class. I felt teary just saying it to him. I think of you when I don't want to come to yoga, I said, I think of all the things you'd say to me. I meant this to be a little funny, to poke fun at his exaggerated eye rolls and sugary energy, but instead he stopped what he was doing on the computer, made me stop what I was doing on mine and flipped me over upside down on the couch. We talked like that for a few minutes, the tops of our heads on the floor and legs crisscrossed on the back of the couch. Forget what the studio wants you to do, he told me. Just do what you want.

It seems so stupid when I try to write about it now, like I don't know who I am or what I'm doing. Mostly I don't, mostly I do. Working at the studio seems to have added this extra pressure to my yoga practice that sometimes I like (when I push myself to find new postures like peacock)and sometimes I don't like (the gym-like mentality of needing to 'work-out'). There is a strong possibility I'm just as sensitive and soft as I was as a little girl, that my constitution is something slower and subtler than the yoga I'm practicing. I love the yoga I am doing now--I just don't know how to make it my own.

The thing about the work-out stuff at CP is that I like myself the way I am. I don't come to yoga to re-shape my body or whip into something lean and mean. I feel a little inadequate at the studio sometimes, I worry someone will catch on my resistance. Of course my body responds to what I ask of it during class with increasing strength and I can't help but admire the results. On a superficial level I love it, I love it. My confidence feels bought, though; insured somehow. Like, as long as you're in this studio, you're okay. Like we whisper to one another with enthusiasm on the way to class Let's Get Our Yoga On! And when I miss class for a few days I feel it i my body, and my brain responds in an ugly, demanding way. I'm missing yoga, I'm losing muscle, I need my work-out everyday, so on and so on. And then the same question shows up: Do I practice yoga because I love myself, or because I hope one day I will?