A kindred month
(Is that even a thing?)
I am not a yoga evangelist necessarily, but I do love taking a class 1-2 times per week, and how (at a minimum) it's fixed my hamstring/sciatica issues and super-improved my lower back pain (and no, I am not an old lady, why are you looking at me like that?), and, too, it, along with reiki (my amazing practitioner is here, please do yourself a favor and go see her), has improved my life in ways that are hard to explain.
That is why it pains me to admit that sometimes I fail at yoga.
Earlier this week I was in class with my favorite teacher. She announced we'd be focusing on feet. Well, ouch. I think I must keep a lot of tension in my feet, which I suppose is better than keeping it elsewhere? Anyhow, we did lots of new, foot-focused things. It became clear early on that my feet were having none of it. An all-out rejection of the poses, in fact. I stumbled and nearly fell. (More than once.) My foot began cramping up. I got a weird ache in my left knee, and my right ankle. I flat-out couldn't do several of the poses.
I am human. I don't like not being good at things, especially things I am normally okay at. But it felt like one of those days where I couldn't get my head in the game. I left class feeling the opposite of how I normally feel after yoga.
It was disconcerting.
That scattered, dreamy feeling is still with me today -- which, let's face it, isn't unusual. I have learned over the past few years to accept my spaciness, the need I often have for something or someone to ground me back here to the dirt, the cement, the falling leaves. I like the push and pull between earth and sky; how I am usually balancing on a wire between the two. I like the view from here. I like the people that catch me on either side, and I'm grateful for them.
This morning, in my dress and cardie and sandals, a gust of wind scattered some leaves off trees and I realized mid-August is also on a wire, bleeding thunderstorms and heat waves one week, and cool rain and shadows the next. And for the first time, maybe, I respected her a little more than usual.