Love and Hate

Not feeling strong, but open, and unarmored

I rang in the New Year in a new way this year -- practicing yoga -- and not just any yoga, yoga led by one of my favorite teachers and accompanied by live musicians. The songs they sang that I was familiar with I have blogged about previously -- powerful, beautiful songs like Purple Rain and Hallelujah -- the latter brought out the cleansing tears.

People often ask me why I call yoga a "practice", and my teacher spoke about this last night. It made me think of an article I read in the New Yorker, in which the author notes that the word practice is meant to signal an ongoing, daily ritual in which one gains incremental expertise and wisdom over time. This is as good an explanation as I can imagine, and it's exactly why it's a practice. I just don't think that's the way a lot of people in the West think about it.

I started practicing Ashtanga yoga in earnest after the New Englander left. It was something I could pour myself into, and man, did I ever need something. Like a lot of the pain that his departure catalyzed, this need to devote myself to something ended up teaching me things I never could have learned if the depth of my need hadn't been so great.

Practicing Ashtanga allows me to be committed to showing up for myself every day. It keeps my body strong and healthy -- well, mostly healthy -- I'm having more struggles than normal in that category at the moment -- and it keeps my emotions right-sized. I don't overreact to things because of underlying and often old emotion when I've practiced because by showing up on my mat every day, I am dealing with the underlying emotion on a daily basis. Not stuffing it or numbing it so that it comes out in a outburst.

So today, despite feeling under the weather, I'm about to get up and practice Ashtanga. Inviting whatever is hampering my immune system to make itself known. Letting myself feel it. Just as I did in that beautiful class last night.

I heard this song for the first time on my way home from yoga last night (or early this morning):

Standing now
Calling all the people here to see the show
Calling for my demons now to let me go
I need something, give me something wonderful

I believe
She won't take me somewhere I'm not supposed to be
You can't steal the things that god has given me
No more pain and no more shame and misery

You can't take me down
You can't break me down
You can't take me down

You can't take me down
You can't break me down
You can't take me down

Love and hate
How much more are we supposed to tolerate
Can't you see there's more to me than my mistakes
Sometimes I get this feeling - makes me hesitate

I believe
She won't take me somewhere I'm not supposed to be
You can't steal the things that god has given me
No more pain and no more shame and misery

You can't take me down
You can't break me down
You can't take me down

You can't break me down
You can't take me down
You can't break me down

I can see a place of trouble
And I'm on the verge
For the love of everybody
I did something wrong

Now I feel some days of trouble
In the hospital
For the love of everybody
But behind a wall

Standing now
Calling all the people here to see the show
Calling for my demons now to let me go
I need something, give me something wonderful

And I like it to mark this first day of 2017 for a few reasons:

1) It's new (to me), and it's a brand new year;

2) The intention that I set in class last night was to choose love, and the title of this song reminds me of the importance of that choice;

3) It's a song about the resilience of the human spirit, and that, more than anything else, is what I'm celebrating as we welcome a new year. Without it, I might not be here at all, and for sure I wouldn't be able to wholeheartedly embrace the path of interdependence with my love that lies ahead this year, and neither would he;

4) Those last couple of lines feel like an appropriate mantra for me right now:

Calling for my demons now to let me go
I need something, give me something wonderful

May 2017 be the year that my demons continue to let me go -- I already know it is the year that I get what I need - an amazing partner in my day-to-day life -- and I know it will be wonderful...