right here, on this mat

My favorite yoga instructor, a lithe little man named Larry, likes to guide his students into breath awareness by saying things like this:

Concentrate on the exhalation. Do not worry about the next breath. Do not hold it in. Push it out and trust that the air will rush back in. Don't be greedy. This is the way of yogis. In their old age, when it comes to the end, they are not selfish with their breath. They exhale, and when the air does not rush back in on its own, there is peace.

Be here, right here, on this mat. It doesn't matter what has happened this day, or what you have to do for tomorrow. Be here, in your body, in this space.


These days I cannot afford to attend classes, so I spend the last moments of most days practicing asanas by candlelight in my apartment. My back and shoulders now tell me when they have not stretched sufficiently, and I know how to listen to them. I catch myself holding my neck tensely while I teach and think, "Why am I choosing to hold onto this stress? What have I to fear?"

Last night, as I stretched to the sky and brought my hands, as in prayer, to my heart-center, I focused my gaze on my fingertips and was startled. They were to me as an infant's, new and clean. My hands were not tools, not pretty or ugly. I was present in my body, not judging it, not wishing it to be anything else.

Whatever yoga does for my posture or my muscles or my breathing, if it can bring me back into the present and into myself, I am thankful for it.