I was in Vancouver, I was in my twenties, and I was moving into my first apartment as a single mom. “Take this,” my sister said, “I think you’re going to need it.” She was holding a yoga DVD in her hand. I’ve never liked bandwagons and a west coast yoga mom, I was not. Thank you, but, no thank you, I thought. The DVD sat on a shelf for weeks, months, who knows?
I can’t remember what did it, what threshold of stress I had to reach to be able to suspend my disbelief, to ward off my skepticism, for long enough to give in. When I finally pressed “play” and heard that we would begin by learning how to stand, I almost put the DVD right back on the shelf.
But I was in such a state that day — as Patricia Walden‘s voice instructed me to focus on my bare feet in contact with the floor — that I was prepared to give myself over to whatever it was that yoga DVD had to offer. So I told myself, if I was going to try this, I had to be all in. All in. And I was. By the time “yoga for beginners” had guided my focus from the bottom of my feet to the top of my head, my body felt like it had dissolved into the air, into the ground … dissolved. No word of a lie. Hard to believe, I know. I couldn’t believe it, myself. Yoga has been part of my life ever since (with thanks to my sister, Jennifer).
I sometimes wonder what it was that day, that first day. I honestly think, if I’d been even a little less on edge, if I hadn’t been feeling a certain tinge of despair, I might not have been able to dive in as fully as I did, as fully as I think was necessary.
So … far from inviting you onto a bandwagon, just saying, if you’re really having one of those days, it may well be the perfect day to dive, all in, to a yoga pose.
P.S. Thank you, Patricia Walden 🙂
a few words ... from Montréal 