Tomorrow morning I leave for a 2 week + vacation to visit family and friends in the West. I am over the moon about getting out of New York...watching people jostle each other through the doors on the subway this morning (as if we won't all get on, eventually) made me so grateful for the impending break.I'm not certain how my practice will fall out while I'm gone. I went to class early this morning, so as to be limber for a long day of travel on the 'morrow. I am being strongly encouraged not to bring my yoga mat (space and all), but I'm undecided. Rolling it out in class this morning I was struck with what I am often struck with when rolling out my beautiful (now ragged) orange rubber mat--that it is such a clean square space to hold my practice. I have sweated and prayed and wondered and fallen and cried and struggled so many hours on that mat, in that particular 72" of space--it's like carrying a little temple around on my back. And on this vacation, where we will be in many spaces and with much family and where quiet time with my body and my breath will be perhaps hard to eek out, I might need my ratty orange temple, in order to carve out space for myself in all these foreign places.
It is also, I realize, the only thing which posesses as intimate a knowledge of my practice as I do. I love all its funny sweat marks and pock-marks and where my feet have worn down the rubber to its fibers. I want to use it until I can see the floor through it, and then I might have to hang it on my wall or something (P. would love that!)...I am so grateful for this rectangle of rubber. I mean really I am so grateful for this incredible versatile body and for Laughing Lotus which is my home away from home and for the amazing teachers who keep coming into my life and for all the hope of striving for an easier mind, but ALSO I am grateful for this strip of textile that I can role up and shove on shelves and in bags and lug around with me and lay down ANYWHERE and make a yoga studio of it.
That's it. I'm decided. It's coming with me.
5 comments:
Good choice! Even if you have to bring shelf paper, it's such a security blanket to know you have what you need to practice. My sister and I run together and she says I am NOT ALLOWED to visit her w/out my running shoes. I need to make the same rule for my yoga mat.
As a yogurt-in-training, i hereby proclaim my devotion to Shanti Town.
Could you please tell me why you call this blog a name that normally describes an impoverished neighborhood?
Have a wonderful vacation, and I'm psyched to see you on the stage soon-
xo
gary
So, I wandered over from your other blog and you know what? I'm finding all of what you're saying here very meditative and thoughtful. I really relate at the moment. Hope the trip has been wonderful...and that you brought your mat.
Erica - I was wondering if Olympians felt the same way about their identical (yet slightly different) outfits...
Gary - Shanti also means "peace"...and also, it's just a run-down little blog...
Kate - I didn't do it! I didn't bring my mat! I got talked out of it! Don't think me a chump...(and I hope you'll keep reading...)
Hi !
I am an old friend of P's and an avid yogi as well !
I am glad I found this and I love reading you.
Hi. :)
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