Heather - Day Four: A Hiccup

I have done the unthinkable: I missed my yoga practice yesterday. I did not voluntarily skip it, however. I had an actual day off from all jobs yesterday, so I agreed to go to Connecticut with my boyfriend (George Woods of the band Birds in the Woods)for his gig. We thought we would be leaving around three or four. Then his booker got him a radio spot at the last minute and he told me Wednesday night that we would have to be in CT by noon. I thought OK, no problem, I will take my mat and practice in New Haven between the radio spot and the gig which wasn't until 9pm. Well, by the time I got to his place Wed. night, he had not received confirmation that he had the radio spot, so we weren't going to have to get up the morning and leave right away. I thought, "great, I will do a nice yin practice at his place, maybe he can join me..." Well just about the time we were waking up, he got a call saying that they wanted him to get to New Haven ASAP for the radio show. So, there was barely time to take a shower. I still planned on doing yoga somewhere, maybe in a park, or find a class or something. We got there after FOUR HOURS. It is a trip that normally takes about two, but there was a traffic jam and so there was a stretch of road about 12 miles long that took us two of those hours to cross. A runner could have run it faster! But I did not fear, I still had confidence that there would be time for yoga. When we got to the radio station, they made us wait almost 45 minutes before putting my boyfriend on. By this time, my head was starting to kill me and I was starving as I had not had the time to make breakfast before we had to get on the road. So we found some food and went to the park. I couldn't practice right away, I had eaten too much and my headache remained. We had about an hour before we needed to be at the venue for set up. Now I was starting to get nervous. We set up, and he asked me to man the merchandise table. Then he didn't play until 11pm....sigh....so, after a set and breakdown, we got on the road somewhere around 12:30. I still had a pretty bad headache. I walked into my apartment at 3:06. I was out by 3:15 and had to be working at my yoga studio by 9am. If I had known the day of events was going to include the radio spot, I could have planned the yoga accordingly, or at least left George to it while I went to the park and practiced, but it always seemed like there was going to be a little time until there just wasn't.

I am disappointed. There are a lot of shoulda, woulda, coulda's running through my mind today. But the truth is, life is just sometimes unpredictable and I always learn best by making mistakes. So rather than start over I am going to chalk it up to life and count Friday as Day Four. After all, meditation and yoga are practices, in large part, of learning the art of starting over in every moment and treating every moment as new with "don't know mind," right? So, maybe my yoga practice yesterday was to be present for my life as it played out. We come to our mats to streamline our lives for a little bit on a daily basis in order to cultivate and strengthen our ability to listen deeply to our own needs. But yoga doesn't exist in a vaccuum. Hopefully, what happens on the mat doesn't stay on the mat. So all the presence we learn on the mat is something we can take into our lives. The more deeply we can listen to ourselves and respond with compassion, the bigger our capacity becomes to listen deeply to others and respond to them with compassion. My yoga was to be present with my boyfriend. It was a beautiful warm day, full of fun and great music, and hope for his career, and I got to spend a WHOLE day with him. We are both so busy so we were very lucky to have that, and while part of me looked for any opportunity to practice, most of me was just able to be there, without regret, and with a heart full of gratitude to enjoy my life as it was in the moment.


WishIng you happiness and metta from a little dot in the universe called Boston,
Heather

PS. As a side note, I want to add one more change. My meditation teacher, whom I have been studying under for nearly two years now, has gently suggested to me at various times that I might want to try reading no dharma books or yoga books for a set amount of time. This, he explains, would give the chance to work with bare experience and not, as we both know is my tendency, use reading as a checkpoint to make sure I am "getting it right." As a read-a-holic, the very thought horrifies me. As someone who knows I am a read-a-holic, the idea intrigues me, so as an added challenge, I have decided that for this 365 days, I will practice asana everyday, but abstain from reading about it. I will continue to read other things, mostly for current issues sorts of information and - gasp! - for pleasure. So my idea to use "Meditations from the Mat" is officially nixed, though I invite and encourage anyone else to pick it up and use it for inspiration in their own practice whether you have taken up the cause of 365 days or some other commitment.