Namaste

The Spirit of God has made me; the breath of the Almighty gives me life.  Job 33:4

The election is over and whether your candidates won or lost, it is time to take a breath. Breathe in.  Breathe out.  Repeat.  You may think the world is going to hell and maybe it is, but before we slide back into the fray, breathe in.  Breathe out.  The last few months have been very stressful for me.  So stressful that the gift that I know God gave me, writing, disappeared from my abilities.  I felt frozen.  Unable to articulate a word.  Not about my personal life or my health.  Not about world views.  I could negotiate Facebook by sharing things others said, but my own voice retreated into silence.  The stress and anxiety continued to build until I finally confessed to my doctor.  True, lots of things were pulling at my energy.  Lots of discord in my household.  Lots of reasons to feel like I was drowning in my own fear.  He recommended more medicine.  Or yoga.  As yoga seemed the lesser of the two evils, I decided to practice some self care and signed up for yoga classes at a new studio near my home.  They hold beginner and “gentle” yoga instruction.  Lie on the floor practicing pushing air from my stomach to my chest? Raise my legs in the air and hold them steady?  Arms move around my head like rays of the sun?  Harder than it seems.  Would have been easier to take the pill. However, at Yoga, I am finding a sense of peace that I cannot find anywhere else.  Not at home.  Not at church.  Certainly not in the doctor’s office.  At class last night, upon entering the room and settling on my mat, I felt the urge to cry.  A deep ugly weeping cry.  I held it in, unsure why a darkened room lit with Christmas lights could bring that emotion out in me.  Perhaps because it is (or at least should be) a safe place.  A place where no one expects me to do anything but breathe.   My favorite pose is Savasana, the corpse pose.  I lie on the floor as though I am dead concentrating on the air flowing in and out of me.  Air that I share with all the peoples who came before me on this land.  Air that has traveled around the world to places I may never go, Hong Kong, Australia, Iceland.  Air that I share with a friend who lives far away and another who lives down the street.  At the end of the class, we say to each other, Namaste, “the light in me recognizes the light in you.” I’ve tried a lot of things to feel whole again.  Food, sugar, buying stuff, new clothes, experiences, even a puppy.  I went to a conference on faith, visited with a friend, read books about the brain, floated in a cold river, did nothing. Right now, the thing that helps the most is knowing that my light is seen and my breath is still warm.  Namaste.