Park Slope Reader

Anna Keller

Best of Summer: Brooklyn Mama Mindfulness (2018)

By Filed Under: Mindfulness Tagged With: ,

It always begins the same way. I wake up with a plan. Perhaps, this is my mistake. After all, is there such a thing as “planning” when you have a toddler? Is there such a thing as “mindfulness”? I didn’t think so.

Not when my daughter ripped off her diaper and ran around the apartment yelling “Elmo! Elmo! Elmoooooo!” I definitely didn’t believe in mindfulness when I found a sock in the toilet, a raw egg from the fridge cracked over my desk and a piece of chewing gum on the back of my pants (that last one was totally my fault). I only first began to believe in mindfulness when I lost my temper at a coffee shop in Windsor Terrace.

Mistake #1 I brought my hungry two and a half year old daughter to a coffee shop in Windsor Terrace, right near a park where we usually like to play. 

Mistake #2 I did not take her to the park where we usually like to play. Instead, I wanted to have a picturesque Brooklyn coffee. 

Mistake #3 I also had not eaten. 

Mistake #4 I had gone to bed too late the night before.

Hunger, sleep deprivation and the need to plan a day can take its toll on any mother. But, there is something about being a hip Brooklyn mama that triggers all kinds of high expectations.

For example, we still want to be cool. We want our kids to grow up in a creative, culturally diverse setting. We want them to know about math, science, writing, and how these subjects often spark a revolution. Many of us believe in the public school system. We believe that these things will set them out on a path to greatness. We believe that Lou Reed, Lena Horne, Joan Rivers, and Jay-Z, all Brooklynites, are part of our children’s genetic makeup. Well, at least their neighborhood makeup. We also want them to have extraordinary upbringings. They should learn how to cross the street, ride their bikes safely along Prospect Park, window shop on Seventh Avenue in Park Slope, yet be experimental enough to try brunch with us at the hottest new restaurant in Cobble Hill. And sometimes, when we think about all of these things when we think about how to get from the Carroll Gardens playground to the new bookstore on Smith Street and still get back home in time for lunch, a nap, a snack, and a cuddle…we lose it. We lose our tempers.

This is what happened to me, anyway.

My two and a half-year-old did not want to sit at the café’s quaint table. She did not want to color with the Ziploc bag of broken crayons I had brought along. She did not want to look at pictures on my phone. I knew it was bad when she didn’t even want a vanilla Donut Factory donut. At the last second, when the tantrum was in full view of everyone trying to concentrate on their laptops, as my coffee spilled across the table and onto the floor, when I could feel that the room and everyone in it was holding their breath, I yelled. “Stop it!” I snapped, “just stop it right now!” 

Often, I think that as mothers we hold so much inside of ourselves that when the time comes, and we actually allow ourselves to break, we’re like a steam pipe that releases an explosion of hot air into the atmosphere. Yet, we don’t feel better after the air is released, we feel horrified. It’s like, how could we have lost control? Who do we think we are, human beings!?! If we are mothers who work, our guilt is magnified.

We ask ourselves, how, when we have one free afternoon with our precious child, could we have lost our temper? Some of us have two children, or three. Some of us have nannies and some of us can’t afford the help. Whatever it is we have or don’t have, we are raising little people. People who will one day run for office, or build bridges, little people who will write books and hopefully not include the parts about their mothers bringing them to trendy coffee shops while losing their minds. 

Here’s what happened: I started to cry. Right there, in full view of the laptop convention, I burst into tears. The young girl behind the counter who looked like a 90’s supermodel with a shirt quoting Beyoncé that read, “I Woke Up Like This” bent down to help me clean up the spill. Her youth and beauty made me feel worn out and tired. When she bent over I could see her perfect breasts and thought of my own sagging ones. If her breasts had a voice they would say, “Hi I’m Linda and I’m Shirley, nice to finally meet you!” My breasts seem to say, “I’m Rita and this is Bob now leave me the hell alone.” If my breasts could smoke a pack of Camels, they would. My daughter touched my face with her pudgy hand and whispered, “Sorry Mommy, sorry.” Oof. 

So, yeah…mindfulness. That day my daughter and I skipped our visit to the public library free reading time series. We went home and ate cookies. We played with all of the dolls on the toy shelf and we put magnets on the fridge. We sang songs. We filled the tub with toy ducks. In those moments I realized I was living in the moment. There was no plan, no “oh, we should do this next.” That’s part of mindfulness and maybe that’s the hardest part of it: the ability to let go. Mindfulness is a superpower. It allows us to thrust ourselves into the full living moment without aggression or anger.

Mindfulness is a state of awareness. It is the ability to bring the breath back to the present moment. Having a plan is ok. Often, as a Brooklyn Mama, we need to have a plan. We live in busy, bustling neighborhoods. But, maybe that plan can be more flexible, and if it can’t be maybe our own minds can. 

If I had tuned into myself and been mindful the day of the coffee shop disaster, I would have taken a moment to find my breath.  I would have looked around and seen the situation. Then I would have understood that although I was a part of that situation, I still have the ability to look at the each moment from a third eye perspective. This idea will not stop my daughter from throwing a tantrum. It will not stop people from staring. The coffee is still spilled; the crayons are still broken. But with mindfulness the day is not ruined, instead it is steeped in possibility.

My daughter is throwing a tantrum. She is frustrated. I am exhausted. I feel that exhaustion. It’s ok to feel this way. It’s ok for my daughter to feel this way. Breathe. This is the moment. This is what’s happening in the moment right now. I want to cry. I feel so tired I want to cry. Feel this exhaustion. Breathe. Let’s pack up our things slowly, mindfully. Let’s put our bags back on the stroller. Let’s help the young woman cleaning up our own mess. Let’s do this mindfully. Look, she’s wearing a Beyoncé shirt. Breathe. Look, her breasts are perfect and mine are weary. “Sorry, Mommy, sorry.” I fed you with these breasts and they look like this because of love. My hair is a quiet tornado. I should have brushed it. Breathe. We are here, in Brooklyn, in a coffee shop, at a table, getting ready to go home. We are sleepy, cranky, overstrained, overburdened. We are fully aware. We are absolutely alive.

Brooklyn Mama Mindfulness

By Filed Under: Bending Towards Brooklyn (Yoga) Tagged With: , ,

It always begins the same way. I wake up with a plan. Perhaps, this is my mistake. After all, is there such a thing as “planning” when you have a toddler? Is there such a thing as “mindfulness”? I didn’t think so. Not when my daughter ripped off her diaper and ran around the apartment yelling “Elmo! Elmo! Elmoooooo!” I definitely didn’t believe in mindfulness when I found a sock in the toilet, a raw egg from the fridge cracked over my desk and a piece of chewing gum on the back of my pants (that last one was totally my fault). I only first began to believe in mindfulness when I lost my temper at a coffee shop in Windsor Terrace. 

Mistake #1: I brought my hungry two and a half year old daughter to a coffee shop in Windsor Terrace, right near a park where we usually like to play. 

Mistake #2) I did not take her to the park where we usually like to play. Instead, I wanted to have a picturesque Brooklyn coffee. 

Mistake #3) I also had not eaten. 

Mistake #4) I had gone to bed too late the night before.

Hunger, sleep deprivation and the need to plan a day can take its toll on any mother. But, there is something about being a hip Brooklyn mama that triggers all kinds of high expectations. For example, we still want to be cool. We want our kids to grow up in a creative, culturally diverse setting. We want them to know about math, science, writing and how these subjects often spark a revolution. Many of us believe in the public school system. We believe that these things will set them out on a path to greatness. We believe that Lou Reed, Lena Horne, Joan Rivers and Jay-Z, all Brooklynites, are part of our children’s genetic makeup. Well, at least their neighborhood makeup. We also want them to have extraordinary upbringings. They should learn how to cross the street, ride their bikes safely along Prospect Park, window shop on Seventh Avenue in Park

Slope, yet be experimental enough to try brunch with us at the hottest new restaurant in Cobble Hill. And sometimes, when we think about all of these things, when we think about how to get from the Carroll Gardens playground, to the new bookstore on

Smith Street and still get back home in time for lunch, a nap, a snack and a cuddle…we lose it. We lose our tempers.

This is what happened to me, anyway. My two and a half year old did not want to sit at the café’s quaint table. She did not want to color with the Ziploc bag of broken crayons I had brought along. She did not want to look at pictures on my phone. I knew it was bad when she didn’t even want a vanilla Donut Factory donut. At the last second, when the tantrum was in full view of everyone trying to concentrate on their laptops, as my coffee spilled across the table and onto the floor, when I could feel that the room and everyone in it were holding their breath, I yelled. “Stop it!” I snapped, “just stop it right now!” 

Often, I think that as mothers we hold so much inside of ourselves that when the time comes, and we actually allow ourselves to break, we’re like a steam pipe that releases an explosion of hot air into the atmosphere. Yet, we don’t feel better after the air is released, we feel horrified. It’s like, how could we have lost control? Who do we think we are, human beings!?! If we are mothers who work, our guilt is magnified. We ask ourselves, how, when we have one free afternoon with our precious child, could we have lost our temper? Some of us have two children, or three. Some of us have nannies and some of us can’t afford the help. Whatever it is we have or don’t have, we are raising little people. People who will one day run for office, or build bridges, little people who will write books and hopefully not include the parts about their mothers bringing them to trendy coffee shops while losing their minds. 

Here’s what happened: I started to cry. Right there, in full view of the laptop convention, I burst into tears. The young girl behind the counter who looked like a 90’s supermodel with a shirt quoting Beyoncé that read, “I Woke Up Like This” bent down to help me clean up the spill. Her youth and beauty made me feel worn out and tired. When she bent over I could see her perfect breasts and thought of my own sagging ones. If her breasts had a voice they would say, “Hi I’m Linda and I’m Shirley, nice to finally meet you!” My 

breasts seem to say, “I’m Rita and this is Bob now leave me the hell alone.” If my breasts could smoke a pack of Camels, they would. My daughter touched my face with her pudgy hand and whispered, “sorry Mommy, sorry.” Ooof. 

So, yeah…mindfulness. That day my daughter and I skipped our visit to the public library free reading time series. We went home and ate cookies. We played with all of the dolls on the toy shelf and we put magnets on the fridge. We sang songs. We filled the tub with toy ducks. In those moments I realized I was living in the moment. There was no plan, no “oh, we should do this next.” That’s part of mindfulness and maybe that’s the hardest part of it: the ability to let go. Mindfulness is a superpower. It allows us to thrust ourselves into the full living moment without aggression or anger.

Mindfulness is a state of awareness. It is the ability to bring the breath back to the present moment. Having a plan is ok. Often, as a Brooklyn Mama, we need to have a plan. We live in busy, bustling neighborhoods. But, maybe that plan can be more flexible, and if it can’t be maybe our own minds can. 

If I had tuned into myself and been mindful the day of the coffee shop disaster, I would have taken a moment to find my breath.  I would have looked around and seen the situation. Then I would have understood that although I was a part of that situation, I still have the ability to look at the each moment from a third eye perspective. This idea will not stop my daughter from throwing a tantrum. It will not stop people from staring. The coffee is still spilled; the crayons are still broken. But with mindfulness the day is not ruined, instead it is steeped in possibility.

My daughter is throwing a tantrum. She is frustrated. I am exhausted. I feel that exhaustion. It’s ok to feel this way. It’s ok for my daughter to feel this way. Breathe. This is the moment. This is what’s happening in the moment right now. I want to cry. I feel so tired I want to cry. Feel this exhaustion. Breathe. Let’s pack up our things slowly, mindfully. Let’s put our bags back on the stroller. Let’s help the young woman cleaning up our own mess. Let’s do this mindfully. Look, she’s wearing a Beyoncé shirt. Breathe. Look, her breasts are perfect and mine are weary. “Sorry, Mommy, sorry.” I fed you with these breasts and they look like this because of love. My hair is a quiet tornado. I should have brushed it. Breathe. We are here, in Brooklyn, in a coffee shop, at a table, getting ready to go home. We are sleepy, cranky, overstrained, overburdened. We are fully aware. We are absolutely alive.

Memory & The Yoga Mat

By Filed Under: Bending Towards Brooklyn (Yoga) Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

In the late 1930’s and 1940’s in New York, the city used funding to do a project on housing and commercial properties. They sent employees out to take photos of almost every home or building. The result was an archive of over 700,000 photos. I suppose the city wanted a record of what things looked like in what seems now like a simpler time of drab black and white. Were there things they could change? Improve? Eliminate? The photos were forgotten; stored away in the city’s archives. Since this was a borough-wide project, and the vaults have been open to the public since the late 1980’s, anyone is now able to glimpse a Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill, Carroll Gardens and Windsor Terrace frozen in time. These photos can be acquired from the city and bought for a small fee. These are visions of our Brooklyn that make us think of what remains. They are snapshots of longing.

The tin ceilings in our realm of Brooklyn turn the world a sepia tone. As we sip our cappuccinos’ in coffee shops that have kept their original architecture, perhaps we can hear a movie reel and recall that a quiet revolution was something that began in our neighborhoods with our own foreign voices. We remember this even though some of us weren’t even alive. So what is memory, really?

The vision of 1940’s Brooklyn does not evoke illusions of a yoga mat. Instead it brings to mind the cinched waists of young women in floral dresses, stoop ball, cigars, and baseball cards flapping in the spoke wheels of bicycles flying down Court Street. And although Yoga did exist in New York in the 1940’s, it was a hidden phenomenon. But how would our Brooklyn have looked if instead of biting our nails waiting for our boys to come home, we had sat on the floor without shoes or socks and said “Namaste”, the divine in me bows to the divine in you. What would those poses have taught us? What would our history books have looked like?

Buddha had an interesting take on love and memory. He said, “Love in the past – is only a memory. Love in the future – is only a fantasy. True love lives in the here and now.” Can this be right? Buddha’s words from 528 B.C. are a memory. They are just memory written down. Does that mean they are still alive? Does this mean Buddha is walking down Atlantic Avenue looking for a good vegan restaurant? Does it mean the 1940’s never died and if this is true then maybe the Brooklyn Dodgers are still playing baseball somewhere, maybe we never really went to war, maybe everything happens simultaneously and it depends on what scene we are taking place in at the moment. But no, that can’t be right. It isn’t right. Memory is the place that exists in our minds and if we can get a hold of our minds we can revisit memory anytime we want to.

Enter the yoga mat, the tin ceiling studio and the breath of not the past or the future, but of the here and now. Yoga requires one thing of us: to show up. We show up for many reasons. Most of the time we show up so that the nostalgia of our past Brooklyn’s won’t choke us. We show up so that we can relive those silent film memories while still letting them go. Shavasana is a good place for this kind of meditation. The end of every yoga class ends with Shavasana, also known as the “corpse position”. This title seems fitting for an idea of something like memory. After all, even our brief day-to-day moments are memories. Yet, what does lying on the ground still breathing teach us about recollecting our past? What can it enable us to do by learning from it?

My favorite thing to do during Shavasana is to visit the dead. And maybe lying on my back allows me a kind of closeness to the deceased that I may not encounter while standing up. Some yoga teachers, at the finality of their two-hour classes, offer a rare and valuable gem when they say, “during this resting pose you may choose to visit whoever you want or you may choose only to relax.” Who knows where some souls decide travel during the dreamlike wakefulness of Shavasana? What does Brooklyn begin to look like in these moments? Are the churches of Park Slope transformed slowly from red brick to a grey film? Do the old Italian bakeries in Carroll Gardens delicately fade into an illusory space on the avenue? What changes and what stays the same in the present moment?

In the 1940’s Yoga would have taught us patience, forgiveness and the art of letting go. Our history books would have stated as much. In some meditations the Brooklyn Dodgers are still playing baseball, the world never really went to war and yes the Buddha is walking down Atlantic Avenue, in search of fried chickpeas. Other visits to the yoga mat inform us that all of this is nonsense, nothing can be erased, and reality is reality. But then sometimes, as we close our eyes, perhaps the teacher passes by and puts her hands on our heads. Perhaps we are reminded of our grandparents, our parents, a child, a sister we lost, a brother we don’t speak to, or a stranger we once loved.  The dead teach us to honor these memories, to hold them in our present hearts where we feel them. And it is in these moments when our realm of Brooklyn really does change. It transforms from a photograph to a live theatre production, from a silent film to a noisy one. The remnants of the past collide with the present. On our yoga mats we can see color, as if for the first time.

YOGA: The Four Noble Truths

By Filed Under: Bending Towards Brooklyn (Yoga), Yoga Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

What is it about the cold months in Park Slope that make Brooklyn stand out like a Charles Dickens village? With all the chaos and commotion of our city, our world and our speck in the universe, it is Brooklyn that remains unchanged. Even with new renovations, new neighbors, new schools, hospitals and restaurants, the true heart of winter lives and thrives on the streets of Brooklyn. Some of this has to do with the deep roots of our borough, the history of Park Slope and it’s surrounding neighborhoods. But, some of it also has to do with Yoga. 

Yoga has become a phenomenon in western culture. Brooklyn is no exception. This is nothing new. As human beings our attachment to the affects of yoga are great. Also, let’s face it; aside from the benefits we enjoy the community. It is in a yoga class where people find they can be alone. It is also in a yoga class that most people find they are not at all alone. So how great is our suffering during this season? How much time have we spent on our own hearts between the cool rush of holiday shopping and New Year’s promises? Winter in Brooklyn gives us the opportunity to deepen our practice in an open and more vulnerable way.

[pullquote]The four noble truths can guide us through a cold season and bring to light our own noble hearts. After all, winter is not about gifts or holidays or even resolution. Winter is about a solace we can find when we are quiet enough. [/pullquote]The true heart of winter resides somewhere between Windsor Terrace and Prospect Heights. I mean to say that if one walks through all of the neighborhoods that relate to these two places, there will be an abundance of coffee shops, a plethora of bars and a vast array of yoga studios. In the coffee shop laptops and frothy cappuccinos prepare us for our daily grinds by serving the daily grind. The bar allows us to unwind from the stressful perimeters of our work, family and home life. But it is inside the yoga studio where we may enter, remove our shoes and respect where we are in the moment. We do not try to escape the cold. Instead, we seek refuge and our own bodies feed us the warmth of our tired souls.

There are four noble truths that can be incorporated into these long months of winter; four noble truths seem to follow us on our paths to the heart. These truths ignite the cold months with a fiery reality. What we might find at the coffee shop, the bar or the yoga studio throughout the year is dukkha. Dukkha is the first noble truth in Buddhism and it roughly translates to “life is suffering”. I know, it sounds depressing right? Although this sounds awful it actually should have the opposite affect. It is a teaching that enriches the idea of impermanence. Our happiest moments can be considered dukkha because they too will end, and so we can say that our saddest moments are also dukkha. They will not last. Dukkha is significant in winter because the cold season too will end. Flowers will bloom again and so we can carry the first noble truth in our mind’s eye as a compass and as a means of letting go.

The second noble truth is tanha. Some translate this word as “craving”. This has to do with our human attachment to the things we desire, or just desire in general. Our need to attach ourselves to material objects, ideas and people create chaos within our hearts and minds. This truth has been realized on yoga mats all over the world. In Brooklyn throughout the cold months and the buying frenzies tahna sticks its tongue out at us and dares us to enjoy our lives as they are. Tahna asks us not to try and change anything but to see everything with a third eye as if we are hovering over ourselves without judgment but with a greater awakening of the spirit. It asks us not to hold on.

Nirhodha is the third noble truth and it is also an instruction on the end of suffering. It sounds so simple: just let go, stop craving things, stop attaching to things. But, I really want my cappuccino! This truth arrives at a slow pace. Through our yoga practice and meditation it comes. The need to grasp dissipates. We may awaken. We may stay asleep. But we practice. This is our path, which then leads us into the final and fourth noble truth.

The fourth truth, magga is our path. It is often referred to as the eightfold path because it is comprised of different areas and aspects of our lives and instructs us on how to walk our own path. In a nutshell it is a mindful way of living. The first three noble truths cannot exist or be realized without this one. The magga is like a sacred duty we have to ourselves and to the world around us.

The heart of winter in Brooklyn can be brutal. Or maybe I’ve just attached myself to that idea. But where there is a lull in the season, there is an opportunity to awaken on the yoga mat. The four noble truths can guide us through a cold season and bring to light our own noble hearts. After all, winter is not about gifts or holidays or even resolution. Winter is about a solace we can find when we are quiet enough. When we walk past the coffee shop, skip the bar and take off our socks at the yoga studio in order to look at our own feet, the ugliness, the beauty, the impermanence and the silent possibility of our own wonder.

 

Art by Heather Heckel

Sweeping the Floors of a Yoga Studio or How I Learned to Touch My Toes and Stand on My Head

By Filed Under: Bending Towards Brooklyn (Yoga) Tagged With: , ,

Once I was allowed to work at a Yoga Studio in Brooklyn. I say, “allowed” because at the time I was a mess (and that’s putting it lightly). I was trying to stop drinking, trying to stop being sad, trying to stop being in love with every tattooed beauty I met in Prospect Park, trying. I was trying to stop trying.

A generous studio owner in Windsor Terrace gave me the opportunity to run the front desk at her Yoga studio a few days a week in exchange for free classes. I could check everyone into the class and then at the last minute (if I wanted to) I could lock the front door and slip my mat through the back curtain and take the class.

[pullquote]I remember that after that class I swept the studio with a clear mind. I put my awareness into everything I did. I noticed the pail, the tea tree oil, the mop, the floor, the ants gathered by the windowsill outside. I noticed myself in the vast world. [/pullquote]“There’s just one thing,” she said before she tossed me the keys on my first day. “You have to sweep the studio after every class. Sweep and then wet and dry mop. I’ll show you.” She opened a closet close to the desk and pulled out a broom with a wicker bottom, and a pail with a bottle labeled “tea tree oil concoction”. Born and raised in Brooklyn my parents used Pine Sol and Clorox on everything. This was new and environmentally savvy. It smelled like upstate New York and made me forget for a minute who I was and more than who I was it made me forget who I wasn’t and who I was trying to be.

My boss had me follow her through the studio first sweeping from the corners inwards. Then after we pushed the dirt into the mini dustpan we filled the bucket with this Upstate New York smelling substance and began the mopping, then the dry mopping. “You must mop the same way you sweep and do it mindfully. Every time you clean the studio bring your focus and energy into what you’re doing, just like in yoga.”

I felt like a female Ralph Macchio in The Karate Kid. I disliked doing anything the same way. Looking back, perhaps that’s what my life lacked most at the time: structure. I wanted to do things the same way I just didn’t know how. My body and mind pushed everything away in those days. I pushed so hard against emotions that I couldn’t feel anything and so sweeping the studio, in the same way, every day, sometimes three times a day, was a relief and a hindrance all at once.

The first week of sweeping the studio different pictures from my life passed through my mind. They weren’t all bad pictures but I was trying to focus! Of course there were also the yoga classes. I would sweep, check the next class in and then slip my mat through the back curtain and feel that I couldn’t do any of the poses. I couldn’t even touch my toes!  I fell back into Child’s Pose more times than I could count and then I couldn’t wait for Shavasana, even though that scared me too because though relaxing it would mean having to go deep inside of myself to find peace.

So there I was, working at a yoga studio feeling like the worst student of yoga, pushing my feelings away, doing everything wrong…or so it seemed. But, it’s funny with the Eastern arts. Sometimes, faking it is the one true path to heart. Going through the motions somehow helped me to get somewhere, which wasn’t anywhere really, but it was here.

Let me explain. One day my boss asked if I could do the desk on a Sunday night. Trying to stay away from the bars and the boys I thought this would be all right. But, the Sunday night class was a restorative class and I had only been taking morning classes that generally were early flow and tune up classes. A restorative class is slower and it is supposed to be more relaxing. I’m a brassy Brooklynite with a “go, go, go” personality and so as I found out that night the restorative classes are more challenging for me. Also, I had been taking yoga and sweeping the studio for almost six months and I still felt like I couldn’t do anything. I still couldn’t touch my toes, I definitely couldn’t stand on my head and I smelled like a pine forest.

Sunday night arrived and with it a smaller class. The morning classes filled up but Sunday night was for the wicked, or just for the people who didn’t have to work on Monday morning. I checked the class in and then slipped through the back curtain. It was warm outside and the windows of the studio were open. There was a calm feeling in the air and we began. Halfway through the session I felt strange. I was completely present for the first time at the studio. Something about the slow drift of the class made me take notice of every movement and every thought. And with these movements my thoughts slipped away. I think this is what Zen Buddhists call “no mind”. And then all at once the teacher had us go into “easy pigeon” but using a bolster to lie on.

Easy pigeon is known to open up the hips. But, more than that the hips hold anger and tension which at the time I didn’t know. Using all of my awareness I deepened the pose. I breathed. I stretched. I stopped. For the first time in my life, I stopped trying. And then a flood of tears came. I didn’t know where they came from, or why and it didn’t matter. It was my body colliding with my mind. It was the relief of release. It was a slow croon, a long note, a letting go.

I remember that after that class I swept the studio with a clear mind. I put my awareness into everything I did. I noticed the pail, the tea tree oil, the mop, the floor, the ants gathered by the windowsill outside. I noticed myself in the vast world. The next week I touched my toes. A month later I did my first headstand. Today I sweep my own home with that same awareness. I mop with the same tea tree oil concoction. Only today I don’t push myself away. How can I? I’m right here. I’ve been here all along.