Hello Community Yoga!
Amy has asked me to step in and do some guest blogging on her site. I am a childhood friend of Amy’s, a professional writer, a lifetime yogi, one-time yoga teacher and a food blogger. I am hoping I can share some of my recipes with you from my Pipelette blog as well as share other musings from on and off the mat. Thanks for reading.
Amy reached out to me this summer as I was readying for a cross-country move – my second one in two years. This move was taking me back to Portland, Oregon, where I had lived for 16 years after a two-year stint in the ‘other’ Portland, on the coast of Maine. My teenage daughter and I packed up our house in July and headed back West. I would be happy to never see another cardboard box or Sharpie marker again. Although, I still catch myself eyeing a sturdy shoebox or a perfectly square printer paper box and thinking how it would make the perfect packing container.
Back in Oregon, I am still in transition, flitting from one temporary dig to the next while I await the closing of my house early this fall. Transition is distinctly uncomfortable. I am dutifully taking care of myself and honoring the change, yet I find myself still struggling with this discomfort. I want my things (stuffed in storage), my routines, and my bed. I am reminded of a beloved yoga instructor who, when asked how she was holding up in the face of life-altering news, summed it up as sitting in chair pose, which is more aptly known as awkward pose or in Sanskrit, Utkatasana. So, when I come up against yet another wave of resistance, I conjure or better yet, get myself into awkward pose. The deep knee bends, full extension of the arms over the head and a firming of the belly ask much of the body and shunt the mind’s chatter toward big breaths of air. Sitting with the awkward, sitting in the discomfort, being in the pose and not in the next or last moment – simply breathing, is all that is asked of us.
Yoga is delightfully tricky in its ability to get us to center. Utkatasana, by requiring that all four corners of the foot meet the mat, grounds us and anchors us as our minds resist. Finding a modicum of comfort in this pose is the victory. Here’s to finding a comfortable place to sit during the challenging and not-so-challenging days ahead.