Happy to Be Back

 

Downtown Flushing prepares to celebrate Chinese New Year

Day TWENTY NINE

We all stood up.  Just before pranayama breathing, Kara said, "Take a moment to be present in the room and look into the eyes of your own best teacher."  I did just that.  And suddenly my eyes welled up with tears.  During pranayama, I let the tears fall.  During the exhales, I could feel the tears sliding down the side of my face, by my ears.  It has been an emotional 48 hours and already, just as the 5pm class started, I was already releasing what needed to be released.

I don't know if I wrote it in my last entry, but on Thursday morning, The Husband and I put an offer on the house that we saw on Saturday.  Within an hour, our agent called us back and said the owner accepted our offer.  What?!  Really?  That fast?  My heart skipped a beat as I thought about this new chapter of our lives starting and closing the old one behind.  Within 6 hours of that news and the implications of all that came with it, I was driving my mother to the emergency room.  We were both so focused on her health, that it was only on Friday that she found out about the offer.

Although I knew I had to get back to the hospital on Friday, I did wake up and wonder when I could fit in my yoga class.  How could I be thinking about yoga at a time like this?  Well, because I was doing so well, going every day, it was my 28th day.  I didn't want to skip a day of yoga.  And then, I shook my head and marveled that I could think of yoga as my mom lay in a hospital bed.  So then I felt guilty for thinking of my yoga before my mother.  I made a deal with myself:  if I could get to yoga after my mother is discharged, I'll go to the latest class offered in this city no matter which studio it was in.  Well, that never happened.  So I went home last night at 9pm feeling happy that my mom was alright and her issue was nothing serious but sad that my streak was broken.  Sure, I could do a double.  But I really wanted to go every day for 101 days straight.  Then I felt angry at myself, "Why are you feeling bad when this was an emergency and there was a good reason for you not going today?!"  Because I wanted to go to yoga today even though my mom was sick.  A little voice inside me said.   

Even though this challenge has been tough at parts, exhilarating at parts, boring at parts, it has been the one consistent thing that I have done for myself this last month and the benefits have been incredible.  As my life starts to change with the prospect of home ownership and this sudden need to take my mother to the hospital, this yoga has been one of the very few things that I can hold on to while my life changes and events happen that demand more of my time.  The yoga room is where I decompress, where I still my mind, where I focus, where I take the deepest breaths of my day.  And on a day when my mom was sick and I was worried, sleepless, and stressed, I looked to my practice for calm, for a release, for peace.

After having practiced for 27 days straight, one day of missing yoga definitely felt strange and my body missed it.  Looked for it.  Yearned for it.  So today, back in the sweat box, I cried at pranayama.  Partly because I asked myself to be compassionate to me.  It is OKAY to miss a day.  Be easy on yourself.  It was an emergency.  All that mattered was that I came back ready to work, to sweat, and to let go.