Love as a Path of Return
“There are moments when you stand on the brink of a new experience and understand that you have no choice about it. Either you walk into the experience or you turn away from it, but you know that no matter what you choose, you will have altered your life in a permanent way. Either way, there will be consequences.”
― Dennis Covington, Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake-Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia
Kelly left home this morning at 6am to get to the airport. He is flying to Bellingham, WA to meet with the inspector and finalize some details in regards to our upcoming move. If all goes as planned, we will arrive in Bellingham in the beginning of November. In the meantime, I am in full swing with Monday Backbends, Tuesday Level 1/2, Wednesday Asana Junkies, and Thursday Level 2/3 along with various guest appearances and Intensives. I am planning to take the month of November off from teaching weekly classes while I get settled in my new digs and outfit a new space for filming, etc. The house we are purchasing has a large, unfinished downstairs with windows and space enough for yoga classes and future programs. My plan is that when it is safe to be in a room together, I can offer some intensives by invitation and/or application and ease into the unfolding of a new vision.
Last night in writing group I offered a writing prompt about thresholds, choices, and consequences, inspired by the quote at the top of the page. This is a month of transition, of living in a liminal space as I close down the details that made a life in Colorado and look ahead to new possibilities for what is to come. Like I wrote in last week’s entry, life is full of many contrasting feelings and walking through them while dealing with so many logistics has been stressful. Add to the moving-related stresses, a global pandemic, wildfires, hurricanes, the possible breakdown of democracy, a disappointing verdict regarding Breonna Taylor, the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and so on, answering simple questions such as “How are you doing?” or “How’s it going?” grows increasingly difficult. To be clear, I am doing fine and I am happy to have so many practices and skills to bring to the process of living life, I am simply saying Christina Sell’s inner and outer life is full these days. And, from what most people tell me, I am not alone in these feelings.
Online classes continue to bolster and support me and the regular work in strong asana has been quite fruitful, helping me regain some strength, mobility and to refine some poses I haven’t paid much attention to for a while. Lucky for me, I have a lovely group of strong students who are coming along for the ride through these advancing practices. Also, I am enjoying my 75-minute classes a lot with small, digestible amounts of information and students of all levels and experience. One big gift of Covid-19 has been a renewed appreciation for asana practice and teaching. I have been practicing and teaching long enough to have cycled through stages of zeal and burnout more than once and I am happy feeling this middle place of gratitude and interest for the strange beast that is asana practice.
Sometimes I stand back from life on my mat, look at asana as though I am meeting it for the first time, and find the practice to be such an odd endeavor. How is it that these somewhat arbitrary shapes carry such profound possibility for self-understanding, transformation, and connection? While I do have a few insights and answers to that question, mostly I am aware that beyond the great techniques for strengthening, stretching, and developing increasingly more subtle aspects of awareness, so much of asana practice is an opportunity to offer myself loving attention.
I am not saying that every asana practice is some kind of super-sweet, love-fest. Anyone who knows me knows I bitch and moan and lament my difficulties just like anyone else. And yet, within all that drama, I find the steady efforts to return to my breath, to what is actually happening in my body through sensation, awareness, knowledge, and action is a means to acknowledge limits, to build capacity, and to shower myself with love-infused attention. As time goes by, the profundity of self-love continues to surprise and delight me, showing me that God’s Love is not some far-out, other-than experience, but is the dynamic state of me returning to the practice of offering myself Grace and holding myself and my struggles with tender honesty. Love, for me, is a practice of return rather than an always-forever-arrived-at state. Today, I am happy to be traveling this road of return with so many fine people.
In other news, I have posted over 130 classes for streaming on my Teachable Site with a $20/month subscription, making lots of different classes accessible and affordable. You will find a Beginning Series, Levels 1, 2 & 3 Clinic Classes, 27 different Flow Classes, Themed Classes, some content from Finding Depth in the Basics 1 & 2, and several past Asana Junkies recordings. Lots to enjoy and learn from. Perfect for the month of November when I hope to offer some pop-up livestream classes, but will be a bit out of pocket.
All right, keep the faith.
And, Vote Blue. We need a landslide to minimize the fuckery.
