Week 2 Update

ARCHIVE

March 31, 2020

So here we are. The new normal. A time when people everywhere are being furloughed from jobs they expected to have for their lifetime. Where healthcare providers are having to weigh their dedication to healing and care against bringing the virus home to their families. Where every day courage has become the norm, and where everything we thought was a constant in our lives, unchangeable, is now completely unpredictable.

I've been here before. Not, of course, to this degree.  But the feeling is the same. The phrase "new normal" brings me back to that time in my life post-cancer treatment where everything seemed upside down. Now, that sense of shifting foundations is amplified by a thousand degrees because it's not one person's solid ground that is shifting, it's everyone's.

That time of unsteadiness brought me to yoga, and yoga is keeping me steady now. It's keeping me physically and mentally healthy and is one thing that is always constant in my unpredictable life. It's something that I do everyday at the same time each day. A path towards being by and with myself. These days, yoga is also letting me go into the depths of what I'm feeling in safety. I am allowing myself to be scared, angry, frustrated. I'm allowing it to bubble up in that one hour of practice. Yoga has always let me be still in a rush of noise. Now, it is teaching me something new, to experience real solid joy right besides fear and sadness.

These are all good tools for this strange time. Thanks to you, we have been able to keep bringing yoga, with all it has to offer, to our community. 

It's a strange time to teach yoga. I feel a responsibility to bring you something richer, more profound than in regular times. I'm not sure I'm always doing it right. Part of the reason I'm called to teach yoga and lead a yoga community is that yoga doesn't tell people what to do, it just gives them the tools to find what they need. While I wade my way through uncertainty at all levels, the one thing I will keep depending on is the practice of yoga and it's ability to give us all a space to find our everyday courage.

May you be happy, may you be healthy, may you live with ease and love.

Sara