I’m sitting through another hurricane today. So far we’re just getting hit by brief torrents of rain and wind. But the shutters are bolted in place. Canned food stocks the pantry. Flashlights and candles are strategically placed. All of my classes are cancelled for two days. Now there’s nothing to do but wait it out at home, hoping the power doesn’t go out.
Such is life when one lives on a barrier island in South Florida.
Plenty of work waits. I could sit in my shuttered office and write, prepare lessons, return emails and texts. I could clean, organize, cook, do laundry. I could fill up my online shopping carts, go mind numb watching cat videos on social media, or watch the 24 hour coverage of varying spaghetti tracks and reporters bearing up against the wind. I could allow the images showing the 600 mile wide pinwheel heading straight for us to fill me with terror, but I’ve decided to take a different track. Beneath the hype and hubbub, introspection, acceptance, and serenity are calling to me.
Last evening, as the first outer bands came through, I was teaching a yoga class comprised of seasoned students. We all knew the sequence by heart. As the class progressed, we fell into rhythm. I spoke less and breathed more. I became attuned to the audible, disciplined breath of the students, who like well-practiced musicians, only need minimal gestures from a conductor to keep them together.
Earlier, on the drive to the studio, the erratic driving around me seemed to signal people’s agitation about the coming storm. I was grateful for where I was headed. Yoga always makes me feel more stable.
In the dim glow of the studio on a prematurely dark evening, my students and I were rooting to the ground with each down and up dog. With every chaturanga dandasana, we hunkered down, and let the earth hold us, like rabbits in a burrow or tortoises in a den.
This morning when I woke, the gusts were mild but expected to intensify as the day wore on. Still feeling the glow of the previous evening’s class, I spread a mat on the patio beneath the overhang, absorbed the uptight breath of the planet, and began to do yoga during a hurricane.
The plan was to return to the familiarity of the set practice from the night before. But it just didn’t feel right. Then I remembered what happened on the drive home after class. As I turned into my neighborhood, a warning came across the car’s display.
CHECK HYBRID SYSTEM
STOP THE VEHICLE IN A
SAFE PLACE IMMEDIATELY
I was almost home, so I slowed down and kept going. The electric engine wasn’t kicking it like it normally does at that speed. The gas engine got me home, but at a limp. The gas engine was supposed to be the comfortable, familiar, and well-established one, but without the hybrid function, it was unstable, maybe even dangerous.
My tried and true practice felt something like the gas engine in my hybrid car. My wrists ached. My neck was tight. If I continued, it would be at a limp, a shadow of what I was capable of. I stopped and felt a pull. I needed to get closer to the ground. I dropped to my hands and knees. Put my forehead on the mat. Child’s Pose.
Something akin to intuition, instinct, or grace, led me from there. Working gently, slowly, strongly, I made way up to a few standing postures, and got right back down to the mat again. Working in this way, with, rather than against natural forces, I found a peaceful center in the midst of chaos and uncertainty.
For the millionth time, yoga redeemed, saved, and brought me home to the wisdom I only find when I listen, really, deeply listen, and integrate all that I’ve studied and learned. When I practice through the tumult, I come to terms with the uncontrollable mystery hedging against all that I think is safe, lasting, and permanent.
-Radiance Writer
November 9, 2022
Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash
Radiance Within 