I shared in class this morning that, as a teacher, the wife of a principal, the mother of 3 children who all played spring sports and have birthdays the last month of school.....I always felt tremendous overwhelm at this time of year....always. One of the many gifts that I receive from yoga is practice in both "pausing" and "noticing". As I teach, I give the instruction often to notice what you're feeling and sensing in your breath and in your body. This practice has brought "muscle memory" to my ability to pause and notice what's happening to my internal landscape and to make the wisest choice for how to care for myself. So, practicing yoga teaches me to notice and pause which provides a sort of muscle memory in my brain for how to do this when the going gets tough....like the end of the school year. This is one of the many ways I've learned to take care of myself, to "take down the love letters, the photographs....to sit and feast on my life" as this poem beautifully says. I teach yoga because I hope and wish the same for you.
-Namaste
Love after Love
The time will come
When, with elation,
You will greet yourself arriving
At your own door, in your own mirror,
And each will smile at the other's welcome,
And say, sit here, Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
To itself, to the stranger who has loved you
All your life, whom you ignored
For another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
The photographs, the desperate notes,
Peel your image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
-Derek Walcott
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