Wake Up!

Quite a few years ago, I used to joke that my job description should read, "Alarm Clock." Whether in an asana practice or breathing or meditation, it seems that a yoga teacher simply encourages her students to awaken from a place of avoidance or distraction. In the time of Covid-19, it seems that finding places to escape from the ongoing dread of sameness, and the constant parameters of our shrunken worlds, is our new norm. Whether you are diving into novels (beach read anyone?), catching up on old movies, or learning to draw (you should see my attempts at a great horned owl!), we are all uncomfortable with our unstructured time and seeking to fill it rather than feel, well, what we are feeling. This is why we practice. Ideally our practice - whatever it is - will give us just enough to concentrate on to bring us into the present moment. Watching an inhale become an exhale, pressing our big toe mound into the earth, watching a thought dissolve away, all these are tuning forks for our attention. Each practice anchor pops the bubble of distraction and brings us back. Here. Now. Again.

In the SmartFLOW world we call this presencing. And with each practice it's a bit easier. Every day we need just a little bit less to arrive back into the present, even when the world is an anxious and unpredictable place. We trust that our beloved ritual lands us - however briefly - in the knowledge that the stuff of the world is always shifting about in unknowable and sometimes scary ways, but inside us is a steadiness, like an inner lighthouse, knowable only in the here and now.

I'll see you there, er, here!

love,

annie