My teacher N gave a lovely intro to yesterday's yoga class:
Sometimes you feel as if you’re in a tight spot and there’s no room to turn and every exit seems to lead to another wall. Your problems seem insoluble.
That’s where yoga can show you the way. Sometimes your body feels tight too, and movement is restricted. But by breathing into the compressed areas and gently working them loose, you can find space where there was none before and gradually unfurl.
And figuring out how to create space in your body shows you how to find the space in other spheres as well.
In a crowded elevator at work, I was deep in a one-sided conversation about whether I should take my pension as an annuity or as a lump sum and what were the repercussions of each scenario, and suddenly I became aware of the stony silence around me. I am the most boring person on earth, I realized. This is why young people hate old people.
How could these four Sanskrit words—Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu—mean 28 English words—"May all beings everywhere be happy and free, and may the thoughts, words, and actions of my own life contribute in some way to that happiness and to that freedom for all"?
Yoga teachers often deliver a little homily as a theme for the class. Sometimes it’s based on a personal experience, sometimes on a current event, sometimes on a seasonal topic. On Monday, my teacher dedicated the class to Obama, pointing out that the qualities to which we aspire in yoga are the very same required for able governance: steadiness (in staying the course), strength (of conviction), flexibility (in making necessary compromises).
Last night our hostess made the claim that in every couple, one person lives in denial and the other in reality. She made the claim specifically in reference to awareness of lice and bedbugs, but I believe it’s true in general. In my relationship, I am the one who lives in the real world, Other the one who lives in a fantasy of well-being. For him, the choice of subway seat is governed by proximity, not the hygiene of who sat there last. A ringing phone is just a ringing phone, at worst the announcement a robo-call, not a harbinger of catastrophic news. A clanking radiator is just a noise, not a signal of boiler breakdown.
He sleeps well. Guess how I sleep.
