Alone Together
As I continue to shelter-in-place, writing weekly blog entries grows increasingly more challenging. Not only does the current state of our society worry me as I watch basic values like health, equality, and the environment be used as fodder for divisive narratives and actions, but I feel like I am living lifetimes in single weeks that drag by at lightning speed.
Isn’t there a Twilight Zone episode where, when left alone for long periods of time with human interaction coming only through through a computer screen, the protagonist’s mental and emotional machinations play on endless loops of mundane tasks, conversations, and anxiety-related projections until said protagonist leaves the consensual space-time continuum for an entirely self-referenced alternative reality?
Oh wait- that is not a Twilight Zone episode—that is my life, sheltering-in-place.
Okay, kidding.
Sort of.
Sheltering-in-place, for me, is not as bad as my self-indulgent musings might imply. The depression I mentioned a few weeks ago has dissipated for now, I am enjoying my online interactions, and I have significantly less laundry to do than when I talked to more people than Kelly. My dog never leaves my side, the cats tell me this new normal suits them just fine, the garden is bursting with greens, and I am more creative as a cook than ever before. Seriously, I do recognize my good fortune.
The Twilight Zone part is that my sense of time is skewed and I feel the absence of the inspiration that came from life out-and-about. Since 2007, I have spent most weekends traveling and visiting wonderful yoga communities made up of interesting yoga practitioners. From conversations with hosts over dinner to interactions with students in the classroom, I returned home from my trips with stories, reflections, and insights born from the infusion of energy that came from those interactions. And, with something about which to write.
Today, I do not want to write about the news, the pandemic, systemic racism, or internalized oppression. Last week, I wrote about asana classes, which, as much as I love asana classes, is no longer an interesting topic for weekly writing. I wrote years of almost-daily blog entries about asana classes on topics including, but not limited to, music or no-music, flow or alignment, themes or let-the-yoga-speak-for-iteself, and so on. I spent another several years of blog entries posting my sequences, commenting on my themes, and recording my life in the classroom. I am still happy to talk about those things, but now I call those conversations “Teacher Training” and I like to get paid for having them. Then, there were the years of blog entries criticizing the modern yoga industrial complex and the various problems with the business of yoga, until I realized that for all the ways our industry is broken, my righteous indignation about the problems did nothing for my personal outlook or capacity to help other people. Somewhere along the way, I started writing more about my inner life of practice, teaching, and living than about yoga in specific. And, to be honest, I find that well of inspiration somewhat dry with so much of time devoted to me, myself, and I, which brings us to the increasing number of recent blog entries, like this one, that begin with “I am sitting down to write with nothing to write about.”
Speaking of writing, one surprising joy of Covid-19 is my Monday night writing group.
As many of you know, my long-time friends and mentors, Mary Angelon Young and Regina Sara Ryan, and I began a year-long writing program in March in collaboration with Yoga Oasis. In fact, the first weekend of our program was the last out-and-about workshop I taught. In retrospect, if I never get on a plane or have the chance to be a guest teacher again, that weekend was a good experience on which to end as the experience was profoundly inspiring. (To be clear, I am hoping to return to air travel and guest teaching at some point in the unforeseeable future. But well, that future is not seeable right now.)
I cried frequently throughout the workshop in March. (March feels like a lifetime ago due to leaving behind the consensually-agreed upon space-time continuum and residing now, in the afore-mentioned alternative self-referenced universe, but I digress.) Perhaps my intuition was grieving the coming loss of the life I had known. Maybe the tears were PMS, since my cycle began the same day our governor issued orders to stay at home. These were not gut-wrenching, body-wracking, loud sobbing tears. These were the kind of tears that come when cynicism, sarcasm, and suspicion yield their grip on the heart in the presence of vulnerable sincerity. These were tears of tenderness and gratitude.
I have taught many of the people in that room for well over a decade. I have taught them through engagements, marriages, and divorces. We have rolled out yoga mats as people bottomed-out with addictions, found recovery, stayed sober, and we have weathered an occasional relapse together. My students have claimed love beyond cultural constraints, allowed gender identify to morph into something clarified, fluid, and personal as they have dared to stand for their sometimes-difficult truths. These people I call students have had children, lost friends and family members, opened and closed studios, bought and lost houses, done their jobs well, made painful mistakes and shown up with courage in the midst of tedium, heartbreak, and the ten-thousand distractions of life.
We struggled together with the assignment: Write one true sentence. We listened to one another’s depths as the struggle found a voice—first halting and then, brave. Throughout the long hours in the room together, I felt what can only be described as pride. I am not responsible for who these people are becoming, but I have had the honor of bearing witness to the process of growing up in public that is at the heart of what it is to be in yoga community over time. I cried, feeling that, for all the schlepping myself on planes, for all of the hustle of the business, and for all the mistakes I have made personally and professionally, I have spent the last twenty years in sweaty rooms talking about postures for the gift of these precious glimpses into people’s inner lives.
Writing group on Monday is a handful of us from the writing program getting together to support one another in what can best be called “keeping at it.” The same safety, tenderness, and generosity we had in March somehow lives on Zoom, for all the awkwardness of the format, of which there is plenty. Writing group is a lot like asana class— your thighs don’t stretch themselves, no one can stretch them for you, and yet, you can’t always stretch them alone. Words don’t write themselves, no one can write them for you, and you can’t always write them alone. It’s kind of like sheltering-in-place, in a way. In asana class we are alone, together. Same with writing group.
Before I sign off, I must state that these reflections of growth in community are not limited to the group of people to whom I am referring. Similar sentiments, born from similar shared experiences, live in the hearts of yoga practitioners across the world. Studios are re-opening, classes are meeting outside, and the online possibilities for connection are only beginning. Planes or no planes, big group gatherings or not, I know we are alone, together.
Keep the faith. More soon.
