My friend Tasha, God bless her, has tried her best on me while finishing her yoga teacher training practice. She's held bootleg classes on her rooftop and at the beach while practicing on myself and our friends, and she's made significant progress on her confidence level, I might add. However, while I enjoy the social hour and the skyline from the top of her house, yoga makes me feel distinctly how I've been generally feeling in life lately: that I am missing the point. Around the fourth or fifth chaturanga dandasana is when I start thinking about In-N-Out.
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| Chaturanga Dandasana Sequence |
I do love Tasha, though, and I was glad to receive her invitation to the final "graduation" class of her yoga training, taught by herself and her fellow trainees. I always enjoy Tasha and just about anything she does, because when we're just hanging out, sprawled on her living room couches, she has an uncanny ability, with her slow Texan drawl, to inject wry humor into very astute and matter-of-fact observations. We can spend hours talking about work, the ups and downs of dating, the psychological makeup of our various friends and co-workers, all while self-medicating with frozen yogurt. We're both easily crippled by uncertainty and indecision, and often feel the need to discuss many things in minute detail. We're both Christians who know God is holding the steering wheel, but we are also backseat drivers with a number of suggestions.
When Tasha is teaching yoga, however, everything about her changes. Her body straightens and her voice rings out clearly and calmly; she owns the room, she controls the pace, the tone, the music playing on the speakers through her iPod. As I sat in her class on Saturday, breathing in and out with my eyes closed, I listened as her voice washed over me: "Helen Keller once said, 'The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart.' I encourage you all to pay attention to what your heart is telling you during this class." I wanted, instinctively, to do better, to pay attention.
My body had felt tight like a spring all week, holding in the stress of work, and the feeling that what I was doing in life lately wasn't enough, and yet also the fact that I was running on fumes. I listened closely to my body. During the class, I felt the trainees' hands on me, adjusting me, radiating warmth into my tense muscles. I felt myself engage, my shoulders relaxing, my body both stretching and resting. At the end of the class, one of the trainees intoned, "Happiness does not create gratitude, but rather gratitude creates happiness."
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| Tasha's Yoga on the Beach |
In the last few months, I had not only forgotten to be grateful, but I had also forgotten my God to whom I am meant to be grateful. I go to work everyday, focused on what I don't like about it (but grateful for employment, she hastens to add), and then I go home too exhausted to do anything but eat dinner and watch TV, feeling vaguely like I once had interests and hobbies, and indulging in self-pity that I was too tired to do them.
Concentrating on the lives of my friends, enjoying their company, being fascinated by THEIR hobbies, being concerned about their problems, has been my way of dealing solely externally, never addressing the dissonance inside. This weekend, I took time to remember my God. I took time to read the Bible, I thanked Him for all that He had done on the cross, and for my many, many blessings, I sat quietly and enjoyed His presence. I took time to remember that life without Someone to express gratitude is empty indeed. And, I resolved to engage in a fuller life, and not forget so often to be thankful.
In short, when someone asks me what I did this weekend, I can finally and honestly say, "I did some yoga."
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| Tasha (left) and Joyce (right) |
Written by Joyce Huang
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