I struggle to touch my toes. When I step or hop, I usually do so with a thud or plonk. My posture almost always needs work. More often than not, when I close my eyes, my mind doesn't go to a place of peace and serenity. It goes to something that happened, or something that I want to happen, or something that I don't want to happen, or something funny, or silly, or stressful, or fun. It bounces around all over the place. And so, I am not what I thought a Yogi was. But, I am a Yogi.
What started my journey to becoming a Yogi was not so profound. I had a friend. She was a girl. And she taught yoga. Taught? I think that's right. Anyway, it so happened that I did my first yoga class with her. Before the class, I was likely more interested in the girl than the yoga. By the time the class ended, however, something in me had decided this was something I'd embrace. Something I wanted to explore further. I probably didn't know it at the time, but something in me knew that yoga was something I wanted more of.
Now, it didn't take me in one fell swoop. In the coming weeks, months, and years, my relationship with yoga grew more like how a friendship between two introverts grows. I practiced with Adriene on YouTube once in a while, sometimes even a few times a week. Other times, I kept my distance for a bit, and then returned for a greater helping than before. Yoga became a routine I grew into, and then a routine I lost, and a routine I found again. And for the last year or so, I have practiced yoga, on average, about 3 or 4 times a week. Some months have gone by where I practiced yoga every day. But some weeks I've slipped up and let myself go.
And therein lies the key. The reason I call myself a Yogi. Because when I don't do yoga, I feel like I let myself go. Let myself go.
It's as simple as that.
Life is absurd. Moving through it can feel so chaotic. Its unencumbered unpredictability can be torturous when everything that has will wants to create structure and security. The firmer the grip, the more out of control it can all feel. Forces of good and evil, success and failure, light and dark face off like every little thing must be on one side or the other. Black or white.
Until I do some yoga. Until I return to the breath. I return to me. Return to me.
Because nothing is just black or white, is it?
Namaste.
"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience."
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin