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Sometime ago, I walked into yoga class, thinking that since I was turning 50
it would all be down hill from here. Just then, my teacher, Suzie Hurley, happened
to mention a new book, Awakening the Spine, written by Vanda Scaravelli, a 90
year-old woman who started learning yoga when she was 50. The book had a picture
of her, at 90, in an amazing pose. This nonagenarian’s spine was so supple her
feet were crossed behind her head. "Maybe it’s not the beginning of the end for
me," I thought. "Maybe it’s just a beginning." This was a defining moment; that
shift in attitude about aging changed everything. A little while later I enrolled
in Willow Street Yoga’s first teacher training.
I spent my first 10 years in a magical world along the C & O Canal, next to Lock
Eight, steps away from the Potomac River. I remember sitting on a sandbar that
was jutting out from an island in the river. The air was pungent, the water shimmered,
and minnows nibbled on my toes. I was one with the universe.
I had been active and adventurous as a child, but as a teenager I had to move
to suburbia. My shimmering world of nature became grey sidewalks and carbon copy
houses. My attitude changed, too. I was the worst kid in gym class. The last
one picked for baseball.
That "not good at physical things" attitude carried over to yoga for years. I
remember Suzie patiently encouraging me to try pinca mayuranasana, the forearm
balance, one more time. But my mind said, "I will never be able to do this in
a million years." And of course I couldn’t do it.
One day as I was practicing yoga, a new thought appeared, "I can do this." What!
A shift in attitude, from can’t do to can do an instantaneous journey to a
new paradigm! Someone asked my son today, "Can you surf?" "Sure," he answered, "I
just haven’t learned yet." It was the same for me. Can I do forearm balance?
Handstand? Sure. I haven’t done it yet, but I’m about to. And I did!
That’s why I love teaching Anusara yoga. Every class I get to remind myself and
my students that we can do it, whatever "it" is. Every class I get to invite
us all to return to that connection that was our ground of being in childhood,
the connection to the earth, our bodies, ourselves, and to Spirit. It’s all in
the attitude, the first and most important A of Anusara yoga, (the others being
Alignment and Action). And, Attitude is a choice. |
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