misplaced mama

There were days where I would spend over an hour every morning out on my back deck surrounded by bougainvillea, or out by a river at a mountain base , or in a greenhouse attached to my cabin (depending on where I lived) going in and out of asana, sipping green tea, sitting in meditation,  learning to chant in Sanskrit.  I’d take my southern slow time laying in savasana, never really needing to get up in a rush to someone’s calls or cries; back then my job had a given  “start-time” so it was easy to plan and play yoga every morning for as long as I wanted.

 All that practice led me to open a yoga studio.  Then I had a baby.  Then I became a yoga studio owner that had a baby.  When that didn’t work for me and the baby, I became a mama who just so happened to own a yoga studio.  And when that didn’t really work for the studio, I became just a mama who was a student and occasional teacher of yoga.

 Now I don’t know what I am.

 But it seems like I am a constant complainer of things like lack of time, finding a quiet place and the absence of energy to actually practice yoga on the mat.  I could get up at 4am, an hour before my youngest awakes with the Inca dove song and get out the mat and practice but I don’t want to do that.  I want to be sleeping then. 

 But this is not the path of the yogi.  To live with limitations and closed doors.  No, I refuse to go on like this.  And I refuse to beat myself up, judging my body.mind shape from lack of physical practice.  I entered a space a couple years back where I bitched and moaned and felt never alone and helpless…and lost without a practice.  This room was filled with the echo of my fears, where I got to hear them back at me.  They rang in my ears for a bit too long. So from them I learn.

 Yoga is about every moment of every day. To unite each breath with the next. To flow or jump or sit or walk into life with no limits, only possibilities and the chance at creating grace. it’s so not about a mat, a class, a series…no way.  So I have been trying. While I fry up an egg at the stove, I lift my right leg and place my foot up my thigh and balance in tree. I notice how different it is to balance there while keeping the egg from burning and while Sula tries to climb up my grounded limb. I notice how I wobble and my alignment is totally off and in no way am i really in tree pose, but I am because i am balancing and watching and aware.  While I sit and nurse the  little one, I cross my legs and close my eyes and breathe in and out, slowly, letting go of each floating moment, knowing that each is the last. While she bites me, I breathe her off of me, gently put her down and hold her hands, sing her a song about nipple biting being plain old wrong.  While I am reading Dr. Suess on the ground, I spread my legs wide, flex my feet, open my toes and lengthen my spine, I exhale my body down to Old Hat New Hat‘s open face out on the rug and I read while I stretch forward.  Spine opens.  My breath becomes deeper.  Mia climbs on my back, pushing me further down.  I read slower.  While we drive to the market, I keep my mala beads in the car and I chant.  The kids begin to chant along.  We are all singing to the Om spot in the universe where abundance dances, and that will be echoed back to us.  It will because we sing it loud.

 My thinking mind tells me this is not enough.  This is not enough, not enough, not barely enough!!  To protect my lower back, I need more. This is not enough to keep my spinal fluids circulating, this is not enough to keep me limber for full lotus.  This practice will not float me into Scorpion.  This practice, instead might, just maybe, keep me momentarily sane.  But this is not enough.  Where is my seclusion, my solo, formal time to manipulate my flesh into thinking it is only humming space?  Living in the community-less, village-less, isolated culture, I am losing myself in toddler and preschool muck.  Where is my yoga village??? Not enough! The fears, doubts, exhausting monkey-chatter grows in my head.  Then I swing my legs over to once side of the chair I am sitting on, watching my girls eat breakfast, “washing” their hands in their almond butter from their toast and making handprints on the table with it.  I plant my feet on the ground.  I reach my arms behind me and exhale big and I touch the ground with my palms.  The chair supports my body, and my heart is opening so wide, so wide, my belly big and the world: enough.  This is so enough.  It’s every thing there is.

 I am trying to learn to find myself in those little moments, knowing now that those big ones, 2 hour blocks of time filled with spiritual orgasm no longer live in my world.  And that is okay, because now my world consists of 2 little gurus, and a million moments in the day where I can expand from nothing to everything.  When I get down and have to go break up a mini-cat-fat between ragged nailed scratching sisters over LuLu the Doll, I can be conscious, aware, gentle. 

 It’s all I can do.  So it must be so much.  My kids, who seem to get more of a yoga practice than me, twisting and turning and inverting in their moment to moment play, watch me while kick my leg up into Shiva Dance while I pick up their books from the floor that one may be throwing in a tantrum, because shit like that goes down all the time in my house.  Next thing I know, they stop throwing books and  try it out, too.  All three of us trying to balance on one leg while we pick up books off the ground. Giggling. We are all learning. This is so much greater than it can ever even seem.