A Year of Returning

2019.

I know it’s just a change in number, but it feels significant. 

I ended the first day of the new year at the edge of the water, stretching my body in a familiar way as the sun set brightly amongst ominous clouds. 

A year or returning. 

That’s how this feels, as I inhale and exhale in a prolonged Downward Facing Dog, wondering why I spent 2018 resisting this very practice—the yoga, the breathing, the art of keeping it simple.

I didn’t allow anything in 2018 to be simple. 

Some may say it’s “just yoga.”

But today it feels like coming home to something known and true, beyond the uncertainty and muddiness I waded through in 2018, and more present and real than any expectations or plans I have for 2019.

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One of my very first yoga teachers used to suggest we “let Downward Facing Dog be a resting spot” in his heated flow classes. As a baby yogi, I would chuckle to myself, thinking no pose felt very restful when I was dripping sweat and trembling with the effort of the practice.

A decade later, and stripped of most everything I once thought I knew about yoga, I finally understand what he meant.

It’s possible for a yoga pose to feel like a safe space.

It’s possible for a body to feel like home.

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I still haven’t chosen my WORD for 2019. I’m feeling drawn between two seemingly opposing directions:

forward and away from the circles I’ve been spinning in,

and back toward my own deep down heart song.

My word is somewhere in the middle there.

I’m listening for it.