How do I get back?

Recently, I went to a yoga class with a new (to me) teacher. I really love doing that — it challenges me to think differently about my practice, and helps me to stay in a learning mindset.

This teacher gave a cue I absolutely loved. She said, take an inventory of your mat. For the next hour, your full attention must be within the four corners of this mat. Don’t look to anyone else in the room, never mind what they do or don’t do. Stay with you. Consequently, I closed my eyes for the majority of the practice, and it was the most present I had been for a long time.

This morning I sat with what it takes to transfer that kind of presence to an eyes-wide-open life off the mat. Without being self-absorbed, without cutting off sensory input and community: how do we stay centered in our own values, capacities, needs, and mission?

My mind immediately went to all the ways in which this clearly doesn’t happen. The greed, the trauma, the single-minded focus on gaining status and positional power that permeate much of human society and prevent us from knowing what our values and needs even are, let alone stay true to them.

It was much harder to hold onto the simplicity of the solution hidden in my teacher’s cue: breathe, focus, notice, repeat. That is yoga. That is also life. And it is what helps me return to my full self, body, mind, and soul, time and again.