Repeating Numbers

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Repeating Numbers

“A B C. It’s easy as 1 2 3, as simple as do re mi, A B C, 1 2 3 … “ ~ ABC, Jackson Five

I was at yoga the other night for an eight o’clock class, and, for the first time in years, the instructor was running late. But that was okay with us, as we ourselves had lost track of time. We were all happily seated in the practice room, visiting each other’s mats, chatting and catching up from the week.

The door finally opened. It was the instructor. 

“I’m so sorry I’m late,” she said. “It’s already 8:08!”

808 is a significant number for me. When I was a little girl, my parents encouraged my siblings and I to learn our home address by heart. That way, if we were ever to get lost, we would be able to tell someone where we lived. Our street number was 808, an easy enough number to remember. I remember practicing my address earnestly, reciting it over and over, like the words of a favorite song. As a result, the lyrics embedded themselves so deeply in my consciousness that, to this day, 808 is a number that’s as fresh in my mind as it was when I was a child.     

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My Spot

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My Spot

I have a favorite spot in each of the yoga classes I take.

At one studio, I like to set up on the left in the front row. At another, I like to be in the middle of the back row. At yet another, I like to line up my mat in front of one of the many windows.

I wonder what I would do if the instructors insisted on our choosing different spots each time?

As a yogi, I hear so much talk about transformation and moving in new directions. And while I think I’m doing my best to evolve and transform, I know my tendency is to find what’s comfortable and set up shop. 

The other night, I was on the later side and someone was in “my spot”. So, I put my mat down a couple spaces to his right. But then I realized I was front and center, and I decided I didn’t want that. So, I got up and put my mat to his left in the space right next to him.

Hope you don’t mind if I go here, I said, as if my indecision needed an excuse.

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The Spill

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The Spill

I’m a pretty careful person.

I’m a planner and a thinker and an organizer.

I like things in their place, stacked and folded.

I’m not speaking necessarily of the parts of my life that can be seen, like my clothes and papers and such around the house. I’m more talking about the parts that can’t be seen.

The parts that are naturally kept under wraps, like most of us have.

I have friends that can talk about anything. And they do, often to me. I think that’s because they know I will make a neatly folded pile for them, too, set it aside and leave it undisturbed for safekeeping.

This is what I’ve done for myself over the past many years.

It’s just that I didn’t really realize how tall my piles were getting and how many had sprouted. I didn’t know they were taking up so much space and resting at their teeter points.

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Stuck

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Stuck

If you think back to where you started, you can always find the joy in where you are.

This is how the instructor opened the morning’s yoga class.

This instructor is such a young man, and I can’t figure out how he has such insights at half my age.

This is what my grandmother always told me, he said.

Aha! 

Interestingly enough, that morning, I had awakened thinking about how far I had NOT come. All I could think of was how STUCK I was, and the day hadn’t even started.

How did I wake up stuck?

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Gratitude

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Gratitude

I was trying to make a late evening yoga class, and it was a bit bumpy getting there.

I am a suburbanite but have found some classes downtown and, in the evening when there is no traffic, I can zip down there fairly quickly.

The studio is hot, the people are warm, and the energy is high.

I love stepping in.

But, the other night, the road was literally blocked, and I had to take a detour.

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Sky Watcher

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Sky Watcher

On a recent Sunday morning, I attended a yoga class in a new timeslot, and I saw the sky for the first time in Half Moon.

I have always been a sky watcher.

Really, not a day goes by when I do not look up and note the sky. I love clear blue skies, dark and dangerous skies and white cloudy skies.

I especially like the night sky and have always stopped to look up at the stars. I have watched the constellations appear on one end of the sky and later in the night make their way to the other end.

And the moon! My favorite!

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Motivation

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Motivation

I have given my daughter an assignment.

And that is to send me photos of Buddhas from her travels in and around New York City.

I figure I need them for my blog, and they have become an item of interest for me, anyway.

Hopefully, just knowing they are on their way will help motivate me to write.

My daughter understands this, as she happens to be a yogi, too, and so I have gotten pictures like this from her in the past.

But, like with all of us, sometimes, it is just hard to get up and go; to actually start the day.

It might be raining. It might be too hot. There might be hiccups like not enough sleep, too many customer orders, or some daunting tasks.

Or, there could be just too much humidity like the other day when I received a photo of my daughter, a mass of curls atop her head with a text that simply said, Help!

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Sweet Spot

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Sweet Spot

Handstands make me happy.

Sounds odd, but it is true!

This month, I learned something new in yoga. We are incorporating Handstands at the start of our Vinyasas, the transition sequence of which we do many, moving from a low push up to a high push up and back to a downward facing dog.

For me, it is great fun, and I cannot believe how elated I get over it.

Really, I never would have thought that I would be happiest upside down, but this is so, and the feeling lasts once I'm upright again.

Incorporating Handstands changes up the same old, and now the Vinyasas offer up an opportunity and a challenge as opposed to their normal reprieve from the practice.

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No Regrets

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No Regrets

Trust that all that was needed to be done, was done. Everything is okay.

These are the closing words of an instructor whose class I have taken several times.

At the end of each practice, we roll onto our right sides into a fetal position and rest there for a minute, eyes closed.

And each time she says these words.

The comforting words wash over almost 30 of us who are each lying separately on our mats but together in the studio.

How is it that, at any age, it can be so reassuring to curl up in a fetal position and hear the words most of us heard as babies?

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Pruning

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Pruning

The other night, I heard a story about a man’s life.

He told it in 10 minutes flat through a metaphor about his favorite tree.

He was a generous and engaging speaker, conversational in tone and easy to hear.

He used his Japanese Maple as a metaphor, describing its canopy of leaves in the spring and summer, and its inner core of twisting branches revealed when bare in the winter.

He has had to learn how to tend the tree so that it lives year round.

This involves cutting back the branches and, while the pruning oftentimes leaves scars, he explained that this is what facilitates growth in all sorts of new directions.

Yoga has sort of pruned me.

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Into the Heart

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Into the Heart

I attended a yoga class yesterday evening, even though I had practiced that morning.

I arrived with my mind busy from the day, and it felt good to enter the hot room, pin back my hair and lay out my mat.

Everything about entering the room and setting up helped me to step out of the day and into the moment.

It was a quick and welcome transition.

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Yin Yang

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Yin Yang

As a little girl, my goal in life was to grow up to be a hippie.

When I was little, I had a pair of denim colored Keds.

They were too cool for words, and I made them even cooler with ink drawings all over.

Peace and love signs. Flower power. Kilroy was here. And the Yin/Yang symbol.

I never really knew what the Yin/Yang symbol meant, but I would draw it all the same.

When I was younger, I thought it had something to do with infinity and, as I grew older, I realized it had to do with opposites.

But it was not until yoga that I came to understand that Yin and Yang are really about duality, and its meaning was impressed upon me the other day in the studio.

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Reset

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Reset

When I was little, our family was five around the table for dinner every night at 6 p.m.

I really cannot remember a time when we were not all there together. Dinner balanced out the day, and dinner was always balanced.

Our plates were filled equally with a protein, veggies and a starch. One night was fish, another steak, another meatballs, potatoes and peas.

We served ourselves, and we had to finish everything on our plates.

Dinner was like a reset button on the day. Whatever the day was, it was shared around the table over an abundant plate.

On a recent holiday weekend, I picked up a yoga class while out of town.

It was hot yoga, the room heated to at least 95 degrees.

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