Earlier this week, I went to a yoga class for the first time in a couple of months. Life has been getting in the way, but I have missed the class, so I made it a priority this past Monday. It felt good to stretch and to hold the strengthening and balance poses as long as I could. It felt good to let the instructor tell me what to do without my having to make any decisions. It felt good to let all my worries fall away for an hour, to have nothing and no one to whom I was accountable.
Of course, my muscles burned after the weeks away. I snuck peeks at the mirrors to check and improve my form. I glanced at others in the class, wondering whether I looked as good as they did. So my Type-A personality didn’t leave me completely—after all, I have published a piece in a Chicken Soup for the Soul book entitled “Competitive Yoga.”
Finally, we reached the last minutes of class. Time for Shavasana, the meditation period at the end of yoga sessions in which the participants lie in corpse pose while they breathe deeply and visualize a place of peace and calm.
During Shavasana, I visualize myself lying on a dock at Coeur d’Alene Lake in Idaho the summer I was seventeen. The lake around me is a deep blue, the cloudless sky above just one shade lighter, and the hills on the horizon covered in evergreens the color of Scarlett O’Hara’s velvet curtains. The dock beneath me rocks gently in the light waves, and I hear those same waves lap softly as they touch the shore. The sun beats down, warming me body and soul, but I know I can escape its heat at any time by dropping into the glacier-fed lake water.
As I’ve written before, I knew at age seventeen that this moment would be one of the best of my life. I thought I would remember it forever, and I have. But I didn’t know at age seventeen that I would return to the beauty of that moment time and time again to ground me in peace and serenity.
I turn to the memory during yoga class, but I also turn to it whenever I need to calm myself in difficult times. When I can’t sleep, I think of being rocked on that dock on the lake. When I’m subordinating my wants to the needs of those I care for, I remember the lapping of the waves against the shore. When I’m frantically trying to accomplish a task, I try to rid my mind of responsibilities, just like on that lake when I had no responsibilities, and I use that feeling to recenter myself on what is important and what I can let go.
At age seventeen, I’d never heard of mindfulness, but I experienced it. Over the years, through a stressful career and the many frustrations and complications of life, I have strived for mindfulness. Not only during yoga but whenever my cares become too much. I can’t say I’m always successful, but at least I can remember one moment in my life when I was mindful, and I can try to recapture that serenity.
What moments do you turn to for mindfulness when you need it?
A time when my husband and I took a drive, looked for a place to picnic and discovered a river down a bank on the side of the road, scrambled down the rocky slope and sat, admiring the melodious flow of the river, absorbing its sounds, and feeling miles and miles away from the hectic aspect of our lives. I “go there” often during my meditation times. I am there, even though I am not.
Irene, what a lovely picture you paint. I can see and hear your river. And it’s nice to have that place to go to whenever you need it.
Theresa
Wow, what idyllic places you both describe. I always think of James Taylor for one of mine. Visiting the Smoky Mountains in North Carolina one fall with the beautiful foliage and blue haze that sometimes hover over them. Kind of mystical. Gone to Carolina in my mind…
Cindy, the Smoky Mountains are another lovely place. Fall foliage and blue sky are hard to beat.
Theresa