Have You Showered Today?

I’m sorry…before I even begin, can I just say GRRRRRRR to my local coffee shop?  What is with this trend in local haunts of covering over all their electric outlets so no one can plug in their computer?  I know, I know, you don’t want people to hog your tables for hours for the measly price of a cup of tea, but I tell you what, as someone who looooooves going to coffee shops to write—if you can provide me with a reasonably warm environment and access to a power supply, I am yours. 

I mean, come on!  Aren’t you interested in winning the love and devotion of Los Angeles’ army of underemployed writers?  Don’t you know that your generosity with electricity will be paid back in full by the not just one maybe two maybe even three coffees or teas that I and my fellow key pluckers will purchase not just today…but every day?  My god, little neighborhood coffee shop, your tables are always half empty…wouldn’t you rather I stayed and drank my fill than that I have to give up and pack up after an hour or two because I’m out of juice?  Well, I know where I’m not wanted, little down-the-road café…don’t think I don’t.

Okay, wait, I’m sorry…what am I supposed to be talking about?  Is it…how cute Jay-Z and Beyonce’snewborn baby is??!  Squeeeeee! 

Hmmm.  No, that’s not it.

Is it that lately my practice (such that it is) has consisted of a lot of lay-on-the-floor asana, some hang-over-my-legs asana, a little what-was-that-one-with-the-bolster-again asana?  And that, for shame…I don’t mind a bit?  Is it that? 

I remember once, years ago, having a conversation with a friend of mine about repeated patterns.  “Why,” I asked her, “do I keep making the same mistake, over and over again?”  And she thought for a minute and then said something that I still think of, to this day, all. The. Time.

“Well,” she said, “it’s like taking a shower, I guess.  You don’t take a shower and say okay, that’s it, now I’m clean.  I’m done.  I never have to do that again.  You have to shower every day.  Because dirt builds up.”

This is one of the first things you learn in a yoga practice…in any spiritual practice, really.  And you learn this as an artist.  (As an actor often this is the only thing keeping you going, when nothing I mean nothing else will.)  And that is: just keep coming back.  No matter how many times you screw up in the same old way, get aggravated in the same old way, stop paying attention in the same old way, overreact in the same old way, get disappointed in the same old way…you just have to come back. 

Fwoop!  Swap!  Unroll your mat.

And start again.  Not because you’ve done something wrong—no one feels that their daily need to shower (again) is a sign of their broken-ness.   You just know that you’re living your life.  And the more you live your life the more you sweat and get dirty and so the more necessary it is to get naked, turn on the water, and clean it up.

And what does this have to do with my floor-bound practice?  I think it’s this:  I think that I no longer feel that my yoga practice is something which I have to master in an allotted time frame.  (My god, the number of THINGS in my life that I feel I have to master in an allotted time frame!  Yeesh.)  I know that I will be practicing yoga for the rest of my life. Whether or not I’m teaching.  Whether or not I’m writing about it.  I will be doing this practice until my body stops working and even then, I’ll probably practice with whatever I’ve got left…I’ll do eye-blink yoga like the guy from The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. 

There is no fury and no flurry and no rush. 

If I’m having a day (or a week) where I feel heavy and slow (but sweet) as I do this week…then my practice will come with me.  If all I want to do is master press-up handstand (someday, you will be mine!)…then my practice will come with me.  If I’m feeling good and just wanting to breathe deep…my practice will come with me.  And I don’t have to play catch-up.  Because this practice is not something I just layer on top of my life or jam squarely into the round crevices of my life…it is part and parcel, hand in hand, ankle-to-knee…with me. 

All the best things in life are this way.  (Yes, husband...this means you.)

And it’s true, isn’t it?  All the best things are this way.  Sometimes I think that all we should be looking for in life are those things and those people and those places that we know, reward or no reward, accomplishable goal or not…we will keep coming back to. And then all we have to do is turn on the hot water, strip down, and step in.  Again, and again, and again.