So much is different now, it’s hard for me to decide whether to try to condense it into a quick sum-up or not mention anything at all. I’ll land in the middle, maybe. This entry assumes that you know that April 8, 2020, occurs in the midst of a pandemic level of a highly infectious, novel virus called SARS-COV-2, which causes a respiratory illness in humans called COVID-19. Anywhere that justice exists, people are working remotely from home with their incomes maintained, moving around as minimally as possible. Justice exists almost nowhere. There are deep currents of stress about an illness that, when severe, drowns people in their body’s own immune response the infection, and everywhere, people whose jobs are refusing to treat their lives and exposure levels with dignity. There are deeper, long-established currents of economic stress in the millions of people who have lost their already-insufficiently paying work, had no paid leave, and are living on the edge of the next month, during which we will probably still need to minimize our contact with other humans, and during which businesses will not be rehiring or ramping up production.
In this context, my only yoga teaching opportunities are online, where I am a non-expert at creating virtual content, and without the funding to invest in better tools like microphones and camera/laptop upgrades. I’m using Zoom right now, but am doing my best to learn what safe options there are in the settings and in the video streaming platform world, given security concerns.
I started a weekly 30-minute community yoga, Wednesdays at 6 pm CDT, and it is truly a joy to see familiar faces of former students, and people new to yoga, on the screen. I’ve done my best to let go of what all is lost from being able to see people in 3D in class, and offer them care and adjustments in that way. It’s a loss I feel every time I teach, so I get this cycle of joy at doing what I love, and a poignant sense of my desire to be with my students in person.
This week, it was a real struggle to come up with a mindfulness exercise. Yoga teachers are just like everybody else, we feel the lows, we struggle to organize our own minds and emotions. Wisdom is giving ourselves a personal practice and a way to offer ourselves clarity. Hopefully we then bring to our classes a practice that is clarifying for the body, and for the mind. I struggled this week with calling my every idea a “downer,” feeling low and lethargic, feeling plodding and clouded on the mat. I feel a type of pressure about “staying positive” or “offering inspiration,” which absolutely do not feel True. Yoga is not about avoiding or looking away from the ugly. I have cleaned and scrubbed and dusted and laundered my home. I have baked cinnamon rolls and puff pastry that delight the senses and nourish the body, and I barely even like them. The clouds still didn’t lift after a 5-mile walk (in the rain, no less) yesterday. My cat will never not be sick again, and I worry for him daily. Oh hey depression symptoms, you WOULD show up now.
As often happens, over the course of allowing myself to Be in whatever state, but still Behave in the best interest of my health and self, I found a little grain of gratitude to cling to. I’ve suggested that my students “appreciate” their breath or offer gratitude for its presence in classes before. It carries us through our lives every day, and it’s a simple thing, but I feel the nature of my gratitude for my breath has changed, or intensified.
In this context of every outing possibly risking a disease that can crush the breath, in this context where we have little, if any, control over fundamental components of our lives, gratitude for the gift of breath is gratitude for one of the only things truly our own. I found myself considering and appreciating the breath’s power and presence in our individual lives. In each person, the breath is our own. To lose the ability to breathe, or to breathe effectively, is crippling. To require medical machines to breathe for us is to hang over the very edge of Alive. Our body practices at breathing, and then the day we are born, our body clears the lungs to make space. Thus begins our lifelong relationship with the elements, air and breath being the most primary. Our breath is with us from that instant of birth, before our conscious awareness develops the cohesion to communicate or create memories. If we lose our memories and cognition during our life, our breath will still be with us. It is with us while we sleep. The action of breath is not given to us, it simply is part of us. No matter what is spinning out in the world around us. A yoga practice offers an opportunity to notice this gift, and to build the parts of the body that support the breath and keep it healthy.
In these days where there is nothing to be done about so many circumstances, where it feels like there may soon be little else, I breathe.
The Sassafras Cottage 