Present

Present

I was teaching a kundalini yoga class yesterday, on an island, to a group of women, on the full moon, on Friday the 13th, with Mercury in retrograde, during a thunderstorm.

If there were a more perfect way for me to describe my inner state than this, I don't know what it would be.

Warrior 2 is this splendidly overused pose that I deeply despise (is it ok to say that as a yoga teacher?). My dislike isn't from the ancient story of decapitation (google it) or the compression in my front hip, or the tightness in my front patellar tendon. My distaste roots from the forward/backward leaning. Most of us pull forwards into the future and burn the past, many of us lean back afraid to take the next step, and none of us lands squarely in the only place we need to be: the present.

The present is hard, because it demands that we land in the animal space of breath rather than the sinister human place of planning and memory. I'm a planner. And a Story Fondler (as Martha Beck would say).  Like a jackrabbit, I bounce back and forth between where I'll be in five years and how far I've come in the last two.

Now I'm on an island in a space beyond time. There are no clocks, no business hours, no schedules. And as easy as it would be to get lost in lists or someone else's skin, I'm just here, stewing. Processing. Caught somewhere between the sand and the sky with nothing but my breath and the surf: the constant reminder that breath is all there is.

Perhaps the present is a gift that comes without wrapping paper (which, let's face it, is just to place a physical barrier between that a gift and the present moment... to mask it away). Somewhere between warrior one and warrior three, the rage and the reparation, is warrior two. The cutting away.