it has been over a month since i've written.
so many times i've opened up the computer to write a post and, within seconds, closed it again. even now i am fighting the urge to give up and call it a day.
but i miss writing here. i miss sharing the things on my mind and in my body that are mine and not the voices of characters created. so here we go...
change has been on my mind a lot lately. this has been a theme for probably the last two years of my life. more than one person has reminded me that i'm 28, turning 29 in a few short months, and that i am probably in the midst of my saturn return (you laugh, but that shit is serious).
this time period is supposed to be dominated by change. by upheaval.
and the last four months of my life have been the epitome of change.
it is often in change that we recognize what we want to hold on to. it is often in change that we recognize the things we wish we hadn't let go of.
it is weird to me that i haven't been in a real yoga studio since august.
read that again.
since. august.
the last time i took a class--like not a class taught by me in my bedroom to myself--was september. and...that was the only class i've taken since moving.
it has been two weeks since i pulled out my yoga mat to practice at home.
i haven't taught yoga since july.
and i am missing my practice. i am missing my mat, my sanctuary. i am missing the quietness, the calm my soul finds when practicing.
of course, i am missing the endorphins. the fitness. the healthiness a regular yoga practice encourages (i am not going to lie...new york takeout and a more sedentary lifestyle have changed my emotional body as well as my physical), but mostly i am missing a sense of self.
yoga came into my life in college, but it became a part of my life during a lonely time. it helped me find my footing, it helped me find a place. and while that time as passed, i am, yet again, finding my footing and finding my place.
on a particularly difficult night last week, i found myself crying on my couch. after i calmed myself down, i realized that i was sitting in a cross-legged position, my back was straight, my hands rested on my thighs and i was taking deep, sounding breaths...
i had found myself in the pose i take for meditation. this is my position of solace.
when i realized this, i smiled and i realized that, yes, i know body, i need to get my ass back to yoga.
but this is how we learn. three and a half years ago, six months before i returned to my mat and decided to become a yoga teacher, i stood in my kitchen, talking to my friend rachel about how we both wanted to be writers and how we both were trying to convince ourselves that we shouldn't pursue it and how we both had tried to change but the nagging love of writing was still there. three and a half years ago, after that conversation, i pulled out an old script and decided to finish it.
we learn by changing, by trying new things on, and by noticing what calls us back.