Last week on a complete whim, I ducked into a yoga class at the gym. I was on the treadmill feeling unmotivated, bored, and mentally distracted. I am always mentally distracted. I am thinking about what should have been, I am worried about the future, but very rarely am I focused on the moment.
It was 9:55 and I knew a class started at 10. Had I more time to think about it I wouldn’t have gone. I would have talked myself out of it for reasons of self preservation. If I don’t go, I can’t feel stupid for not knowing the downward dog, right?
But before I knew it I was in. Drawn in. And the instructor asked if there were any first time to yoga, and I raised my hand along with the gal next to me. I wasn’t the only one.
Within five minutes my body was tingling as the oxygen of my deep and rhythmic breathing reached places previously deprived. For an hour I breathed. I stretched. I balanced. I pushed energy out my heals, out my fingertips, out my ‘sitz bones.’ By the end I felt calm and relaxed, yet energized.
I made it to yoga again today, and I am officially hooked. Yoga is kind to my twisted spine of stress and distracted mind. It supports me in my recovery from insanity, like a climber’s stake wedged into the side of a cliff. God, friendship, family, hope – they are all stakes that make the occasional freefall less traumatic.
Christy at Dry Bones Dance writes:
“My body remembers things, and I’m discovering that I carry certain kinds of trauma in particular parts of my body, bad things that are just now working themselves up to the surface of my skin. That may not make any sense to you, but trust me – some experiences sink all the way into our bones.â€
I am learning that no spiritual journey is without its physical challenges. We eat, we starve, we purge, we rage, we neglect. But we can’t ignore the creation in our search for the Creator. As I seek healing for my mind, I seek also healing my for body.