January 2

This coffee just gets better and better. So rich and creamy. This morning I have been doing my readings and yoga in the semi-darkness of my living room. It's gray outside, and I hear rain on the roof. Is there anything better than coffee, a book, and rain on the roof? I'm just saying that, but then, I think I also read a similar quote somewhere, so I am not alone in this.

When you do yoga, it only goes well, if I just stop and let go of all the yadda, yadda, yadda. My former yoga teacher told me early on, "You can't effort into this: you just have to let go." I'm not writing about yoga this morning, but it was here in my cocoon of coffee, warmth, yoga and rain on the roof, that the usual yadda-yadda began to subside and I started to feel, well, grateful.  

I was in the middle of Warrior I, when I thought, "Gosh, I'm so grateful that I am able to do this." I was thinking about physically able, but then it just kind of morphed into a surge of gratitude about all the things in my life that have brought me to the right here, right now of doing this pose that always makes me feel strong and brave. 

It's just one of those you-had-to-have been here moments that I could not possibly explain in words, but it did lead me to two specific thoughts. 

I belonged to a yoga studio in the mountains, where I used to live. Two, strong, beautiful, extraordinary women ran the studio and were my teachers. I first came to Yoga as I do to everything in my life, feeling fat, stupid, and incompetent. Does this LOOK like a body that can do Yoga?

I absolutely had to place myself in the front of the group, so that I wouldn't look at everyone else and just fold up my mat and go home.

My teachers saw only a body that could. Wheel? Headstands? Probably not, but then those were my decisions. A body that could sit peacefully, breathe in and out, and try. Yes. A body which began to sing the song, "I can do more if you just let me." A body that stood in Warrior I, hands in the air, feeling strong and brave, YES! And the opportunity to bow in gratitude and joy: the sacred in me salutes the sacred in you. I never left the studio that I didn't hug myself tightly to hold onto those wonderful feelings that I could take with me into the rest of my life. 

I also thought of a woman I know. I believe she is a remarkable 80 years old. Someone told me that her motto is, "Try to do something that scares you everyday." We were talking once, and she suddenly said, "I just feel so grateful." And she cried with that overwhelming feeling of gratitude for being alive and all the wonderful things about living. I didn't ask her specifically what she was grateful for, but I understood it too be the overwhelming joy from all the elaborate contents of "now." Just being here and what we can do with that.

Sometimes that strong, brave, grateful self eludes me. I am older now, and not always so distracted by what isn't, but I'm scantly improved. I do have these things; these people; these experiences that slow me down and sometimes let me be in that now place and so genuinely awed by it all. 

Too many words. It's mostly a quiet thing.