Monday Morning
Monday morning. The first weekend of the training is complete. Exhaustion has settled all the way into my bones. There’s no way to explain what happens in the space of these weekends. To try to describe it seems to belittle what takes place.
A group of 39 strangers does yoga together. In a hot room. For several hours a day. We take breaks to shower and to eat. We come back together to learn. About yoga postures, about breathing, about meditation, about eating whole foods. We speak.We listen. Mostly, we learn how to listen. To others, and to ourselves.
The rest involves a whole lot of mystery. Something shifts. We become quiet enough to hear. Still enough to feel. Open enough to touch and be touched. We still know our own fear, our shame, our harsh judgment of ourselves and others. But we also know there’s more within us. There’s room for possibility.
This first month, it’s maybe just a glimpse. Maybe it lasts half of a second. But that half second is a newfound treasure. That maybe, just maybe, there’s another way to live this life.
Maybe we hated being there. Maybe fear took over. Because that half second of possibility was truly terrifying. Maybe we don’t want to listen. Because the quiet is unbearable. The silence is too much. But maybe we allow the littlest bit of stillness in before we slam the door in its face.
On Sunday night, before parting, we talk about the urge to bolt. The discomfort. And then possibility of what lies ahead if we stay. If we can tolerate a little bit more quiet. We have to re-enter daily life now, and we feel ill-equipped. But we’re not alone. Having lived this weekend in this space together, we built something real. We built a community. How we did that, I don’t know. But it exists now. It’s available to each of us. Every day. And that community can sustain us in the weeks and months ahead. All we have to do is show up. We get on our mat, we practice, and we reconnect to whatever this mystery is. We don’t have to think about it, explain it, or justify it. It’s just here for us now.
~Ali