Yoga, clarity, and being a mom

Today in yoga the instructor asked us to think about why we were there and she told us to take something from yoga, store it up and utilize it "out there".  As sweat beaded on my body and I had to focus on breathing hard in and out so that I wouldn't go cross-eyed, I thought about what I wanted to take with me. 


As my booted feet tromped across the street, my eyes squinting against the blazing sun and my shoulders hunched due to the below freezing temperature, I carried this... what is it?  I carried it with me.  Getting into the car and turning on the radio I carried it.  I rolled down the window to let the frigid air cool off my stuffy, sweaty heat.  Driving down the road I tried to tap into it, tried to find it.  Unsatisfied obligations and undone tasks crowded into my head like so many mosh pitters fighting for the spot right in front of the stage.  With effort I pushed them back, and tried to find the clear spot in my head.  I think this is the thing.  After an hour of sweat and burning muscles and deciding to believe I have one more chaturanga in me, the gift I have given myself is a pocket of clarity in my teeming brain.


I think, for me, that yoga means being alone and quiet.  Even if friends are on both sides and the music is playing and the lights are on and the instructor is loudly challenging us to "dig deep", I find solitude in the practice.  It is a rich opportunity to feel the tendons that connect to my muscles, to discover the length in my spine and the rotation of my neck.  When she tells me to imagine that someone is drawing my head up by a string, I can feel it.  There is a reckoning, an acceptance that my body can do more than it wants to, can go further than it feels comfortable, and past the point of what I think I can do.


That is not all.  I find that there IS a reason I am there, in that studio, in that particular practice of poses.  It is not a nebulous reason, it is as solid as the pavement under my feet.


It is my children.  This is not trite.  This is not a cop-out statement.  Three little lives are blossoming around my feet.  Three young boys are filling up the space around me, crashing through my bubble, leaving foot prints all over my aloneness, and beating drums into my quiet.  In a fast paced crash course in maturation they are growing up next to me.  I am trying to hold them back just a little, speak into their moments with lessons.  These lessons are piling up next to me like papers on my desk.  Millions of teachable moments are filling up our empty spaces, bursting out of drawers and cascading over the side of filing bins in our lives.  I can't hold them back, even if my only goal is to teach them how to run while they run.  They will fly forward while I seem to stand still.  What I want for them is to feel the wind in their hair and enjoy it, and even as I try to slow their roll so that I can make it safer, I know that my best chance is to run alongside them and let go when the string gets taut.


When I say that I exercise for my children it is not that they need me to carry them.  It is precisely the opposite.  They can't stand for me to hold them up, they are fighting to hold up themselves.  Watching them do it is taking every ounce of patience, control, and strength that I possess.  Observing their flight is making tears come to my eyes.  I can't tell if the tears are from the windburn of all of it happening so fast or from the deep ache of it. 


In the yoga studio I find those deep places where the ache dwells.  As she asks me to twist, and my arms and legs are shaky and weak, I can tap into the heart of being a mother.  My heart can pound, my body can move, and all the while I am practicing patience and stillness and the slow, steady rhythm of breathing.