What else do I do? I let my kids off their proverbial leashes a bit. I let them run in the waves, without me being right next to them, after a little instruction. I let them play with [queue revelation type music, dun-dunnh!) squirt GUNS. The only guns they’ve ever really played with. I let them eat too much candy and watch too much TV.  I also indulge in drinking too much wine and staying up way too late with one of my sisters. But let’s not go there.

This year I planned on splurging on a weekend of yoga with an actual, real-life guru. OK, honestly, the closest I will probably ever get to a guru. The small studio where I had taken some classes years ago was hosting someone who studied with B.K.S. Iyengar for like 18 years. Iyengar, as in the Iyengar style of yoga. Amazing.

So, after a week (or 37 years) of self-indulgence, I decided what I really needed to do was get back into my yoga practice. To that end, I re-enrolled in the gym I had attended.  Why the gym and not classes at the studio?  The gym offers excellent yoga classes daily, along with child care.  A bonus for many, essential to me.

My expectation was that I would bring my body back in line, so that I could get the most out of the workshop. What I found was something quite different.

Practicing yoga in Minnesota is not terribly different from studying yoga with some of my previous instructors in California. There is, in my general experience, in Minnesota more of a focus on the physical aspects of yoga. There are classes focusing on fitness, some on stretching, some on relaxation. You can find them at local gyms, through community education and in studios. Among the things that are not generally delved into at the gym or the community center are chanting, intentions, mindfulness, and taking your practice out of the studio.

My first day back at the gym in California, class began with one nice big ‘om.’ Simple. It is so simple. Having been out of sync with this practice of late, I found myself feeling a little sheepish. By about halfway through, though, I was belting it out like everyone else, finding my sympathetic nervous system calming, my breath flowing easily, my mind fully present. All without a thought in that direction. Excellent.

There were other bonuses to practicing with new instructors, new tips, different cuing leading to different results. Just mixing things up a little meant I was more tuned in to what was going on. I found over time that there is a part of my brain that retains what I used to do when I would hear the instructor name a pose in sanskrit, and interestingly a more polished response within myself when I or the instructor would translate that into the common American name for the pose.

All-in-all, I took five very different classes from four different instructors over the course of more than a week. No matter how we spent our hour or so before savasana, each final relaxation held some delightful surprises for me. My shoulders curled up less. My mind was remarkably clear but not wandering. Each day, toward the end of savasana, I found a oneness, a sameness, a more whole experience of myself.

Call it what you will. Certainly there are many in this world with fancier ideas, who are far wiser than me. But for me, the resounding feeling I took away every day was peace. Peace because I had worked hard, done something good for my body, but beyond that… Peace because I was, for a brief time, in touch with myself. In touch with myself on a level I don’t get very often in day to day life. Communing with the part of me that simply does not change from year to year. The simple knowledge that there is a part of me which is unchanging over time, and that I can be in contact with that, is perhaps one of the most steadying forces I could ever imagine.

No one told me it was so, I simply know it to be.

Our children say, “What the hell do you mean, you meant to do more, but never got around to it?”