Renewed

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I began practicing morning yoga for the first time in a long time and once again on a chilly fall New England morning. This just sort of happened to my surprise afer a long, dry and arrid period of thinking about how beneficial yoga would be to me, knowing how meditation could quiet my mind but just not being able to settle into a routine. I am, after all, I aruge with myself, a trained yoga teacher, meditation teacher, yoga therapist. Yoga would help! And yet, instead of practicing yoga, I would get up in the morning all summer long and while drinking a cup of coffee scroll through news website after news website on my computer. In an almost obsessed frantic way, I seemed to be checking what was going on in the world, like I was waiting for, looking for something I had to be prepared for. What was coming I knew not, but I knew it was.

On my beloved porch, that chilly fall morning, that porch which feels like my own private treehouse in fairy land particularly during the early morning hours when nobody else is up, it was there that I started to stretch my hamstrings, wincing as they lengthened. I started to feel, maybe even hear, an internal melody of whole self and being, including my breath. And, with this I began to listen to what my body and soul were seeking, whispering within the movements as I bent forward, backward and twisted left and right.

Yes, I thought, this is the way to start my morning.

Yoga has always felt like home to me. I come back to who I am, grounded in my body with the thoughtful bends and turns, twists and stretches. Moving my body and feeling at home is particularly ironic as I have always been such a nerdy over thinker. Maybe not surprisingly, it is also sometimes completely emotionally overwhelming and unsettling; it can feel like I am back in that Hawaiian surf with my brother on that shore with the cornmeal sand beach, loosing my footing, fearing that I will be sucked into the undertow and die. Sometimes for me, a state of ease is too much to handle. Ease and safety have not always been friends in my life.

I stretch my arms, my right arm mostly in an upward pose; the arm of doing that has been strained and tired from pulling, reaching, calling the doctor, informing family regarding my husband’s state of health, taking care of our rental business on my own, that retirement business that winds up in the spring and summer, paying bills and managing financial and insurance accounts, handling the lunatic and needy dog ever at my heels. All the while my husband sits in his new “easy” chair with lumbar support and heat, his foot elevated and iced, swollen and ugly with scar and infection.

I am breathing slowly as I balance in tree pose, with my left foot pressing in on the inside of my right thigh, focusing. In a one leg pose I laugh, like a pink flamingo on the shores of Lake Nakuru in Nairobi. Standing on one leg flamingos conserve energy, rest and take a nap. I am not taking a nap as I steady then wobble then steady again on my right leg. It has been further observed that flamingos are more still on one leg versus two, unlike me. Balancing on my right leg, which is always the stronger of my two legs, I take in the colors surrounding me on that porch with 10 screened windows. I breath in the last memory of summer green with trees all leafed out and full of life, steady and tall. Maybe I am more steady on one leg vs. two when I focus in, inward to my very soul, I ponder as I feel my body relax just enough so that my breath finds a rhythm and with that, stillness. I look out on the watercolor painting that is the woods beyond — Jackson Pollack-like patches and splotches of bright lime green, deep dark forest green, hints of oranges and reds, yellow as the sun shines in and through the leaves of fall just beginning. Tears fall as ease enters my body and I let it be, finally bringing my left foot down to the earth.

Deep breath in and then out as I move into a forward fold, letting it all go, letting that shit that doesn’t really matter, all go. It always comes back to that breath I think, that breath that slows the heart and blood pressure, relaxes the soul.

I have two favorite mugs I drink my coffee out of in the morning. The cup I love the most is sort of a grey blue and white with the words, “Let that Shit Go,” on one side and and sketched image of a buddha sitting peacefully with what I imagine is a sly smile on the other. I would think that one of my own handmade pottery mugs would be my favorite and yet this $10 mug is the one I grab each morning. Some mornings I reach for the bright green mug which has big white words written on it, “She Believed She Could — So She Did.” My morning mantra on a mug, reflecting my mood of the morning I suppose.

After 20 minutes or so of moving my body and taking in the nearly overwhleming colors and feelings, balancing and focusing, I move to the floor and settle into a seated criss-cross to meditate on my grey mat which I have placed right in the middle of the bamboo floor of the porch I so love which serves as a passthrough to our home. This beloved room has one of my favorite chairs in it, an old sturdy yet harsh school chair I spray painted last year in bright orange, the color of life and freedom to me nestled up against an old oak desk. An equally bright orange glass vase which I watched being pulled and formed in a hot glass shop at the Toledo Glass Museum in Ohio with my husband and his father some years back on a trip to visit sits atop a chest that is up against the one wall in the room in that 3-season porch. The color orange, that literal mix of yellow and red, represents life, creativity and playfulness to me. Others have suggested it’s reflective of abundance, rejuvenation, a gypsy soul. I will take that gypsy soul.

This early morning my husband watches the news just beyond the porch door. I am grateful I can’t hear a peep behind that closed door; he in his world, me in mine. We have different ways of waking up to the new day, my husband and I.

So much within that has been put aside while I, we, have walked through it all across this summer that never was. We made our way through his surgery, 31 staples, open incisions, infections, hospital beds, walkers, crutches, now a cane. I had his doctor on speed dial, sending pictures of infected incisions as needed, awaiting recommendations, running to the pharmacy. So personal those messages get, “He hasn’t pooped in 6 days.” So much invested energy, emotion, feeling between us; it feels like it is me with a new bionic ankle, not my husband or maybe we both have one!

Steady is my gaze out the porch windows at the emerald green trees just turning to a new season in a glory of color and grace. After yoga and meditation, the sun slowly rising, the birds chirping in the woods, the peepers singing their morning song, my heart is now steady.

My arm, self and soul find some peace, ease and relief.

I am renewed and still for now.

At the very least I have let that shit go for the morning.