I have made it back to the hot room for ye ol 26&2 for 3 weeks running. Once a week. The first time was while I was in Tucson, nudged on by Christina’s enthusiasm to drop in to the only class we would be able to make all weekend. A Friday night class called “Bikram Beats”. It was simultaneously laugh out loud and perfect. For real. And I know I have been over and over and round and round in this space that I am a slow learner and that the revelations I have are generally recycled from somewhere in my history, but wow, I am good for it tell you what.
It had been a long ass time since I had found myself wearing next to nothing in a sweaty room making shapes on a wet towel. Since March 7th 2020 to be precise. I knew that I liked this practice, but I had also mostly forgotten. And the thing that I had forgotten was in part how incredibly familiar I am with it. Despite feeling like very much a visitor in the land of 26&2 it is nonetheless a practice that I have been engaging off and on with varying consistency for the past decade. I am not sure how that measure of time has elapsed, but it has. I first began showing up in a hot room in Milwaukee in the summer of 2012, right after we sold our first family home in Viroqua and then spent the subsequent season living with my mom. I kept it up from the very start in Madison as soon as we landed at our sweet little postage stamp in Mount Horeb just before Halloween.
That practice carried me through all measure of life events. Like, for real. I sweated out a lot of shit on that little space of yoga towel. I stared myself right more than once in that mirror. I came to terms with my own fidgeting and its function or lack thereof. I bargained with myself and made more than one deal with my past/present/future. I wrote endless lines of prose. I learned how to finally and repeatedly practice forgiving myself. All the way fighting the heat to stay in the room and staring my own self down like a one woman wrestling act until I could finally feel that sweet softening inside. The letting go that became a reclamation that became a revelation. And THANK GOD for those second sets. For everything. For real.
I have let that practice inform me as a wife, a mama, a friend, a student, and as a teacher. It has been huge for me this past decade (minus the past two years) and I am ready ready ready to restore some rhythm and cadence into the fabric of my weeks with it restored. I mean, not that it hasn’t been happening. I just haven’t been going. Covid and all the rest. And all of those reasons still stand. But I am going to choose this for a bit and see what shakes out. It feels like an imperative after a rocky season of living through much of 2021. And this mama needs a minute to stare her own self down and get right with herself. Ya know?
It was a lot, right? I mean, I know it still is and I know we will keep going but I have such a big desire to take a step back for a hot second and reassess, redefine, and redetermine what works and what doesn’t and move forward from there. The time in Tucson was extra good for me. A lot of it is still landing and still being digested for sure, but there was also a way in which it really affirmed what I had been leaning into already and served up a hefty helping of remembering who I am, what I know, what I value, and the relevance of all of the work and study and consideration that has been a part of the last 20 years of my life.
For one thing, it helped me think that maybe I am not so ready to throw in the towel teaching yoga. And that maybe I am ready to find my footing locally in in-person settings. There is still something very real there for me, some aspect of my identity threaded with the gift of getting to offer support and guidance to others in their practices. I am not done yet. Even if I am ready to fade to grey with everything online. For real. I mean, its great and all and I am not going anywhere any time soon, as a student or as a teacher, but I need some seriously precise parameters within the etheric context of neither here nor there. It is one of the central reasons that sheep beat grad school, and kids win over work, at least in my world as it is right now.
Anyhow, I am ready to teach some classes to people in the same space. And I really think that it may be on the very near horizon in the new year and I am thankful for that. I am interested in what is here and now. How I can best show up to serve what is instead of continuing to steer towards a more opaque abstract. I want to take it slow and easy and relax my edges as best I can. For myself. For my people. For whatever moment is unfolding. I want to make choices and practice the behaviors that are in alignment with the identity I want. Daily. Weekly. Monthly. Yearly. But mostly, right here right now. Starting small and being consistent and showing up for the moment to moment choices in the form of writing and reading and meditating and making. And all the rest of everything that lands me right here. Right now. As I choose to be.