When I say, and when I write, that yoga has changed my life, it’s not a joke or an exaggeration. I have been able to adapt, improvise, and overcome in situations that, in the past would have rendered me quite woeful. I have changed into a stronger person and I suppose that might have been my goal, but I didn’t know it at the time. Shortly after my 50th birthday there was an article in the local free paper, The Sandpaper, that told me a new yoga studio was opening in a town near me and something about this couple, these young people who were going to teach yoga and wanted to “bring something to the community,” well, they looked so happy, and turning 50 made me want to try something new and perhaps have some of “I’ll have what she’s having.”

When I say and when I write that the yoga studios I go to are my church, it’s not a joke or an exaggeration. I feel reborn after every class. If it is the hot power one, which is sometimes my Saturday drug of choice, or the Sunday morning slow flow, or the Thursday before work all levels of breath and movement, or on Tuesdays when we align or Mondays when we start a new week together on our mats in the studio, the classes leave me feeling like a whole new spirit is within me and the “high” lasts for hours and days. It is a community of like minded people who seem to care about what I care about, and think that the same things are important that I think are important, who care about stocking the free food pantry and helping others in need, who understand that a healthy body can’t thrive without a healthy mind, and vice-versa. I have found my fellow “parishioners” and like me, they come back, class after class after class to be filled with the holiest feeling of spirit there is, loving thy-self. You simply can’t feel bad about yourself or about your life when you are moving and breathing and honoring your body and your mind at the same time…don’t believe me?? Be my guest, for real… come to a class, go to a class, watch a class, do it on you tube if you don’t want to be around other people…but I kid you not, it is the most delightful way I have found to say “I love you” to myself.

Today is my last day of 55 and tomorrow I will be fully closer to 60 than fifty, and I can’t think of a much better gift to myself than to love myself more tomorrow than I do today. I don’t know what a lot of the Sanskrit words mean, but I know what a lot of the Sanskrit words make me feel… https://youtu.be/dq9nWHN3y70?si=cb-AdqVJHXrXlxHr if you wish to get a feel for what I am writing about, this link is a song that is a prayer and praise for Lord Ganesha, the Hindu elephant headed god who is the remover of obstacles. I get the deepest sensation of peace when I listen to this chant, I suppose much like a christian person would get in a church singing from a hymnal. AND to be clear, I have had some pretty dreadful obstacles and I sure do wish I had known about all of THIS a long time ago!

Years ago a dear friend bought me a book called Messages from the Mat when I was going through a gruesome situation with a real jerk, and she and her husband did yoga regularly in their home and she told me I would love the movement and the words and that they read from this book every day… and while I did read the book, I did not know what the appeal was, about all of that slow flow and at the time the words did not really resonate with me. At the time of my life when she gifted me the book I was going to kick-boxing classes three nights a week and did not think I would find yoga at all delightful or challenging. What a joy to find out years later that I was totally off the mark and that sometimes, as one of my teachers likes to say, “slower isn’t easier” when we are fully working up a sweat over 75 minutes of bending, twisting, stretching, balancing, and breathing. The Saturday after Thanksgiving will be my 6th anniversary at the yoga studio and I think to myself, after EVERY class, if I had tried this in my twenties, imagine how much stronger and healthier I would be now heading into old age…but regardless, that I tried it at all makes me feel stronger and healthier anyway, so there’s that. The “messages from the mat” would have served me well all those years ago but I always just assume I was not ready to hear them then…I suppose that is really the case with a lot of “wisdom,” that we don’t get it until we are ready to get it…

I have a lovely life and I have a full life but it has at times been very hard and very sad. I try to maintain what I call my “silver lining seeking” abilities, whereas I do strive all the time to try to find the good in bad situations or people, or the plus side of a terrible circumstance, or the ease when things or people make me uneasy, and the peace that I have gotten from my yoga teachers, over these years, has absolutely helped me to do my silver-lining-seeking when I feel weak or sad or angry. Yoga classes have taught me that the ONLY thing I can fully control is my breath and my self, that everything else is out of my control and trying to think otherwise will only bring me sorrow. One of my teachers, in the very first class I ever took with him, said to us, “you have survived 100% of your worst days” and those words have stuck with me ever since. There is no better prayer or praise for your life than that…I did it, I overcame it, I managed it, I survived it…whatever IT is, he is 100% correct and that is to me, one of the best reasons to say “amen” or, as I prefer, A(wo)MEN