This morning before yoga class, as I was considering what to post today, I saw this illustration in my saved posts on Instagram and realized it was perfect. I knew I had some things to say about it, so I decided to wait until after class when I would have time to get my thoughts together.
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I’ve been back to hot yoga the past four weeks, Fridays, but tomorrow I’m on the schedule to teach my indoor rowing class. Since I have been consistent with hot yoga so far in 2020, I didn’t want to miss a week just because of the time conflict, so I decided to go today instead.
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I got to The Yatra Center, knowing there would be a different instructor on Thursday than on Fridays. Sometimes it’s good to shake things up, right? Marsha came in and began to prepare us for class, and casually welcomed us to “power vinyasa.” Vinyasa is a flow of movement between poses in yoga, in coordination with the breath. Already pretty tough. In a hot room. Then add “power.”
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For a moment I questioned, what have I gotten myself into? And then I remembered this illustration and exhortation from Lisa Congdon: Get comfortable feeling uncomfortable. And I knew (as tends to happen in yoga class) that I was in the right place at the right time with the right teacher. Marsha’s class was hard! But it was not too hard for me. It was uncomfortable! But I stayed with it. Her message throughout class was that without the dark, there’s no such thing as light. We can’t appreciate peace until we’ve come through chaos. And sometimes it takes death for us to see how short life is, and to really live it.
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One of the reasons I’m working to grow in my mindfulness right now is to learn to sit with the uncomfortable feelings of grief and loss, to experience them, not push them away. Because they can’t be held off forever. Robert Frost said, “The best way out is always through.” So get comfortable feeling uncomfortable.
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