Opportunities for Growth

On Sundays, yoga teacher training happens in an old renovated feed mill. The studio is on the second floor and there is a wooden perimeter balcony that overlooks the airy, brick and glass bounded central space which is often used for indoor markets, weddings, and events. I arrived early yesterday, bought a cup of coffee from the shop at the entrance downstairs, then walked up the stairs to plant myself cross-legged on the large leather couch, a swallowing kind of couch, outside the studio to sip it, to wake up, and to observe the mill and the life outside the windows, all of which seemed to still be hibernating. Outside it was a bone chilling cold, a world bathed in shades of gray and white, no warmth in color or feeling. 

I didn’t feel like being there. I couldn’t tell you why, everything simply felt off. The last weekend had ended with a session on bhakti yoga, topped off with a moment, one of those cherishable, cherry on the top, fully alive moments. One of our instructors, a musically gifted man with a sonorous voice played the harmonium and chanted a self-composed mantra mixing Sanskrit words with the resonant, mourning of a bluesy old spiritual, his voice filling the room, almost shaking the star-like fixtures dangling from the deep blue ceiling above, his body possessed in that moment with the divine. 

As different as we were, we were all one.

Then, enter this weekend. It started with a winter solstice celebration, a tantric-focused class that stripped us bare like winter does and focused on on breathing, on prana, on life force.  We talked about becoming and being in broad terms and then built a pine labyrinth outside with frozen fingers, walked slowly towards a struggling central fire, all of this feeling like a metaphor for life. Frozen, struggling, fumbling, slow. It’s hard to find breath in a world that feels like it’s dying. It’s hard to find breath in the cold moments, the anxious moments, the sad moments. But sometimes, breath is all there is.  

It was on the heels of the divine and then the frozen that I started my Sunday. My one – yes, there’s really only one – YTT friend arrived and sat next to me on the couch, cautiously, unsure if I was trying to be alone. I was, but I knew it wouldn’t last and if I wanted to be joined by anyone it was her. We have a cautious friendship. I too am cautious when joining her, never sure if I’m really welcome or if she’s busy exploring deeper or more interesting things, people, thoughts. She is way cooler than I am. Way more likable. Most people are. I am a 12 year old in a 48 year old body. I have the soul or all the ages I’ve ever been.

Still, we all want to connect. To see and be seen. And to be accepted. To be part of the universal fabric and feel as thought woven together we have meaning. That’s ageless.

I thought I was improving that through YTT. That my adolescent reaction to never quite fitting anywhere, to being that snag in the yarn, that that was starting to matter to me less. I know, on some level, it is my charge in life to deal with this constant sense of belonging nowhere and to find peace. I’d already accepted that I also didn’t really belong in yoga school, but that I would find peace with that and follow my path, because although I didn’t belong – I did.  We are all misfits after all.

But I wasn’t feeling peaceful yesterday. 

Ann settled in next to me on the couch, her mood seemingly matching mine, maybe it’s that halfway point in YTT, maybe it’s the holidays, maybe it’s the moon. We talked about the day to come, a half day (thank god) and our assignment to practicum groups for team teaching that would happen later. I turned to her, half joking, and said, “I just know that I’ll be assigned to a group that provides me SO much opportunity to grow.” There were two people I had in mind when I said it. 

She laughed, I laughed, bolstered, we started the day. The power of a shared laugh.

Wouldn’t you know, I was right. As we sat there in our semicircle on our bolsters, my middle aged back asking me why I no longer sit in chairs, it seems, drawing numbers and assignments at random o slips of paper, and I knew, I knew ever before I drew how it would play out. IT wasn’t me being pessimistic (which can certainly happen). It was me knowing what I needed to face. How I needed to grow. My initial reaction is, of course, to tell you all the reasons why being in a group with these two is torture, blah blah blah.

But, it is really an opportunity to grow, this really is about me. Why do I react to them the way that I do? It’s because of my insecurities, my challenges, my needs, my attachments. It’s mine to work on.

Growing can really suck. 🙂 

I know that these aren’t people who bring out the best in me and that what I’ve been assigned to do in the group also isn’t an obvious way for me to shine.

But perhaps I need to redefine what the best in me is. Perhaps it’s an opportunity to find a new best for tomorrow’s me.

Remind me of this in a couple of weeks. Oh yes, that’s why I wrote it down.  To remember.