Moonflower Yoga

I walked into my first yoga class in the summer of 1997. These were the days before Lululemon and a studio on every corner. I believe I wore a tank top and a sarong, having no idea what to expect (I later determined the sarong was an unwise choice). It was in the un-air conditioned old Westport Allen building, with stinky communal mats, and a teacher with crazy curls and an irreverent sense of humor like me. Patricia Gray taught my first class, and many more after that. I was hooked.

There would be many ebbs and flows over the years. The years of having babies saw the tide of my practice recede, but as children grew, so did my practice. I began to discover other teachers- Lisa Uhl, Mara Colbert, Jennifer Birch- as well as a multitude of styles. Ashtanga. Vinyasa. Hatha. Restorative. I practiced regularly, at studios and at home, until 2008. That's when the bottom dropped out.

My dad was diagnosed with cancer in April of 2008. I deemed yoga a selfish un-necessity. My world became one of caregiver and nurse, as I teetered the line between mother and daughter. I cooked meals, drove him to appointments, sat and kept him company through chemo, and let myself quietly come undone. This is when I encountered the white knuckling through a night of true insomnia, as the rest of the world slept, and I had waking dreams of death, decay, and loss.

The end came as the first leaves started to turn on October 1, 2009. Like many caregivers before me, I was left with a gaping hole in my life, and a sense of 'well, now what?' I closed up my heart and attempted to simply soldier on- but we all know that never works. I decided that I needed to revisit yoga.

In the beginning weeks of revisiting practice, it was a process of getting to know my body all over again. Remembering strengths and weaknesses, working out the kinks, finding my groove. I stayed in the back of the class at first, mat in the corner, quietly observing, taking it in. I sampled new teachers and old, trying each style on like an old pair of jeans. Some styles fit better than they had a few years prior. Some I had outgrown, as we all do with age and experience. But up to this point, my yoga was mostly physical. I would om and do the occasional chant, I half heartedly listened to retellings from the Bhagavad Gita, but I didn't connect with any of it.

In class on day, a teacher told a very personal story of her own loss in life. As we laid in our restorative savasana, she compared God's plan for as as being like a beautiful needlepoint. When we look at the tapestry from the right side, it's beautiful. We can see the picture perfectly. But have you ever looked at the underside of a needlepoint project? It's all tangled threads, it makes no sense. We are all stuck on the underside of the big picture, and sometimes terrible things happen that make absolutely no sense. We rage and curse God and decide life is meaningless. But there is a purpose to all of it. There is a plan. There is still beauty.

As she spoke these words, I could feel my heart ache. Tears slid silently under my eye pillow. I broke down. In public. In the middle of yoga. It was mortifying and cathartic all at once. I began to make the connection between was going on in my body with what was going on in my deepest of soul. This was when true healing could begin for me. My yoga practice changed vastly after that. I worked on healing my fractured heart, and I began to feel a pull, a call, a longing. I entered teacher training in the fall of 2012 at the School of Therapeutics, and with each special focus class I assist in, with each workshop and class I take, I find myself more connected with true grace and joy. As Suzette Scholtes would say 'This is my dharma. This is what I was put on this earth to do.' I look forward to helping others heal with love and grace, through the therapy of yoga.