Yowsa folks. This little blog turned 5 this past Saturday. It is hard for me to wrap my head around all of the content that lives in this modest wee corner of the interwebs. It’s a lot. Five years worth. Eider was not quite 6 and Maple was 9 when I began writing in this space. So very many things have happened in that window of time and it feels good to occasionally look back through all of it from this point further on, from the future sort of, and love on my old self with a bit of empathy and forgiveness.
While things were quiet in this space, I was busy enjoying a weekend full of teaching, connecting, and practicing in community. Our trip to Madison was great. I felt more than a little bit rusty in my public class teaching skills. Choppy and awkward at times. But even still, I felt very much like myself, inhabiting a context that is meaningful and resonant and purposeful for me. And in many ways it felt appropriate to see myself out of rhythm with the flow of teaching in that way. I simply haven’t been doing it. So much of my teaching right now is one on one, and much more coaching oriented. Which I love and am super thankful for. But damn, I do miss teaching to a group. Like, a lot. And I miss the richness of my own practice. I have never been able to understand how anyone can teach yoga when they do not practice- seriously, I hear it’s a thing- and that was in even starker relief for me this weekend. While I haven’t not been practicing, it has certainly been with a much different tone than typical and the creative and generative impulse that is often the current of my time on my mat looks a little more like simply trying to breath some life and awareness into my postpartum, tired mama, sleeping bits. When the well is empty, what have you got to give?
Yesterday, my boys and I flew down to Florida for a week of sunshine and family time- seriously missing Chris and Maple who needed to stay home for school, swimming, work… life- but seriously thankful for this chance to rest and reboot. The sun. The beach. A baby on the beach. There really is nothing better. And I have a bit to chew on while I’m down here which seems typical and appropriate for me at this point. I go to the sea to clear my head and restore or recreate my vision. It works for me.
The themes that I am sitting with that came up for me on the trip back to WI primarily have to do with identity. And a little bit about sacred space. I think my struggle with living into my full identity will most likely be a life long one at this point. I continue to find it difficult to be in relationship with all of my parts in a balanced way, without one atrophying as another thrives. And as basic and somehow mundane as it may seem sometimes, I miss the part of me that moves through the world as a yoga teacher. It is a part of me that holds a lot of potency for me. It has kept me on my game in terms of my own self-work more effectively than anything else in my life. Helps me stay straight with myself. It is wild because that is the part of me that really came into it’s own during all of the years that I was longing for the time with my small children to be back, and now that I’ve re-entered that long-short season again, I miss what I had cultivated while I was missing it. Ha. Guess that makes me human.
Anyhow, I miss teaching. But I miss especially group practice. The group context has always been the lifeblood of my practice. So different than being on my mat at home alone, nothing much like a public class. And it certainly benefits from both. It is in many ways born out of public classes and made better and deeper and more poignant by time spent alone in the laboratory of my home practice. I believe that all of the spaces that we practice in we make sacred, but the spaces that we practice in together we make even more so. It has held our laughter and our tears, bore witness to our triumphs and defeats, and watched us hold each other as we fall and as we rise up again. I am super into all of that. And I am ready, more than I have been, to begin the work of cultivating the group practice community in my new home as well. More than I am interested in serving in the public class domain, even though I love that too, to be sure. But my time is a commodity, more than usual, and I am interested in these deeper conversations. I am interested in the unfolding Life of Practice. That grows and shifts and evolves as we do. So, maybe more of that to come. Let’s see.
Just some thoughts in motion. More to come, I am sure.