I was stuck in the back of yoga class again yesterday.
This is not my favorite spot, for no particular reason, other than habit. I like being in the front, in my own world, diving into empty space instead of someone else’s mat. No doubt books (or at least lengthy articles) could be written about one’s preferred spot in yoga class. (“Melissa likes to be out in front of the crowd. She has ego-istic tendencies, preferring to be watched by others.”)
The thing is, I know that a change of perspective is good for you. Many of us do, but few of us change perspective on our own. Too much going on, too important to have some sense of what needs to get done or none of it will, too hard to figure out any perspective different from the one we already have. So we wait to have change thrust upon us. Or to have a particularly annoying co-worker insist on it.
In the case of the yoga class, rather than try to elbow my way into a spot in the front row or pout about being stuck in the middle, I opened myself up to the change. And I learned some lovely things.
For one thing, I learned that there are genuinely nice people in the class. When first I began attending, I was saddened and a little bit frightened by the lack of warmth I felt, how people looked the other way rather than smile back at me. I wished for the electric energy of a shared practice and settled for my own. I felt like an outsider squeezing my way past the conversations taking place in the anteroom at the end of class. I lost any hope of finding my Asheville community at yoga.
But yesterday, as I stood on the side hopefully scanning the rows for an empty space that could accommodate my mat (and mostly waiting for the teacher to come make space for me in the front row) a woman near me beckoned. She and her friend pulled their mats over to make space for me — unbidden.
Such a small gesture, yet so remarkable in a world where people rarely take the time to do even small things for a stranger. (How many people might have seen Jake’s shoe and socks fall out of the stroller in Charleston without bringing it to our attention? Too embarrassed to yell, too certain someone else would do it? And how many times have I pushed aside a generous gesture with similar rationalizations?)
Of course, I said, “Thank you so much” with a big smile, and I got a smile back. We even smiled again a few minutes later when the teacher decided to make the women move their mats again to accommodate yet another latecomer. “That’s what you get for being nice,” I grinned, and we had a little bit of bonding.
It’s lovely, I recalled, to practice yoga next to someone you like. It’s lovely to be able to smile during a practice and not be the only one. It’s lovely to imagine that people around you are happy.
Being Open to Change
After class, I spent some time thinking back to other small moments when I was introduced to an unwelcome change of perspective, something that jarred my sense of how my day was supposed to progress. I wanted to remind myself that being open to change as I was in yoga class would bring something good into my life.
Like last week when Jake had to stay home from school — again — because he had an inoculation-induced fever and wasn’t allowed back for 24 hours. (“I don’t think it counts if it was from his shots,” his girlfriend’s doctor-mother said when we were back in school. “I know,” I agreed. “Unfortunately, he got the fever at school.” At least I know next time I lie about him being fever-free, I will have a doctor’s approval.)
There was a time when Jake staying home unexpectedly could throw me into a depression.
The problem is not — as I hope is obvious by now — that I don’t enjoy spending time with him. It’s that I enjoy doing things like, oh, making the money that helps feed him. It gets tiring being the one with the flexible schedule. Off Mike goes to put out another daily newspaper that will be forgotten when the next one comes out. Here I sit, planning out how I will spend the weekend writing about breaches of contract while Mike and Jake play in the park. It’s enough to make anyone a little bit cranky.
But instead of feeding my crankiness, I took Jake to Health Adventure and then we had coffee downtown with Daddy. I didn’t dwell on the fact that I had (have) a huge legal project to do or that a friend was coming for the weekend, further cutting into my work time. I just embraced the fact that the Universe doesn’t care if it’s Tuesday or Sunday or your friend is coming to visit, and It certainly doesn’t care when the arbitration closing brief is due, and sometimes I have to stop caring as well.
You have a child, you get surprised. A lot. It’s the way kids work. They remind us that our illusions that we can plan our lives are nothing more than illusions.
Yes, you need a plan to make it through the day with kids, but a plan only gets you so far. You are going to get that call from school or that sudden aversion to refried beans or that new refusal to sit in the stroller. And you can either fall apart because of it or embrace a new direction.
Without Jake to thrust a new perspective on me every so often, what will remind me that it really has no bearing on this world whether I make every deadline I set for myself? How will I find the wisdom to recognize that small, still moments carry more beauty than big, planned ones? Who will show me the endless joy of a big baby smile that stops all the piddling details of life in their tracks and lets me live for one unbounded true moment?
I’ve never doubted that Jake is a gift. But what a gift he is.
Perspective with Training Wheels: Marichyasana (Sage Twist)
Like any beautiful child, any yoga practice offers us the chance to work on changing perspectives, whether it’s something as simple as moving our mat to an unfamiliar part of the studio or finding a new way to approach an asana. Even in the most focused asana practice, our mind grabs at the familiar, focusing on a particular part of the body or one way of breathing.
It’s impossible to observe everything that’s happening in our bodies at one moment — that’s one of yoga’s many beauties. Years into my practice, I thrill to discover new parts of my body with which I hadn’t been familiar before.
Still, our minds figure if there’s too much to take in, they’ll just keep to the small piece that’s easy and familiar. And, gee, doesn’t it seem they do that in the rest of our lives as well?
So take some time — on your mat or off — to try looking at things in a new way. For example, spring offers all sort of possibilities for noticing your street in a way you hadn’t before — the way the white blossoms on the cherry tree next door float into our yard; the bright spots of the little purple flowers growing in front of our house; the way the sun hits the yellow house across the street and throws a little sunshine back into my office.
And to help introduce your mind to the process of changing perspective, try the following two versions of marichyasana.