Practicing Non-Attachment

This Buddhist concept is important--perhaps the most important of all--but so hard for me.

As a Navy brat I did not get a chance to be attached to that many things. So the things I clung to--the very few--which I don't like to tell people about because some deep superstitious part of me believes then they will be stolen away--I keep secret. Or close to my heart. And I become VERY attached to.

They are not usually material things. They are usually a thing I do which brings me great joy, or a friend, or a place I love. Perhaps I pick things like these because they feel harder to take away. An activity is portable, a friend can still be reached if you try, and a place remains--like a perfect postcard--waiting for you to come back.

But even these rules do not hold. Activities change depending on where you live and what you have access to. Friends are tops-but the sweetest moments are still ephemeral. Just true--no matter how much you want it not to be true. And places--you promise yourself you will return, but it can take longer than you think, or worse still, you go back and it is different.

But I expect my yoga teacher to remain the same. She is one of the ones who espouses Buddhist precepts, and I need her to help me do so.

But my beloved yoga teacher is going on a journey. She is Tara Judelle, yoga star of the Hollywood YMCA, beautiful, flexible, philosophical, wonderful. I never speak or tell her what I think. I am a quiet, diligent student (except when I am breathing heavily in parsvovapassana, or something that sounds like that, when my liver is being wrung out and my hamstrings are about to snap) preferring to express my appreciation through effort.

She is going to Bali, and I am so happy for her. She deserves for some major good karma to shower down on her. I hope she visits the monkey temples, dances the dances, climbs Gunung Agung, the belly button of the world. But I will miss her.

She is a wonderful, sustaining, steady force in my life. I am trying trying not to feel attached--to believe another yoga teacher, who has much good to offer--new poses, new wisdom--will enter my life, via the YMCA. I am grateful for what I have gotten.

Namaste.

Vaya con dios, Tara

The Gift of Yoga

For his birthday I gave my husband a private yoga session with my favorite yoga teacher, Tara. I knew it was a slightly coercive gift--maybe not the gift he fantasized about--but rather the gift I fantasized about. But, I reasoned, he is getting more serious, we are over 40 now and health matters, and he did his first back bend the other week. It is time for some instruction!

When I told him what I was getting him he was not happy.
"Really?" he said. "Have you already booked it? Is it too late to cancel?"
But then he caught himself, and said he would try if that was what I really wanted to give him. Pretty game. I did promise him that my teacher is leggy, blonde and hot!

I booked it. As the day drew nearer he asked why I hadn't just booked his yoga teacher--he does privates, too. And maybe I should have. I like him. He teaches Anusara at the Y, too.

Sunday morning came and I got the house ready. I swept and vacuumed the floor and rolled up the carpet. I laid out his thin, old, holey purple yoga mat inherited from my dead friend, put out some ice water, lit a candle, and whisked the boys off to the farmer's market to give him silence and alone-time with his hot yoga guru.

He loved it! And he loved her! His face looked ten years younger when I returned and his shoulders were back. He babbled on excitedly about yoga factoids he had never known. (Did you know you are not supposed to just fall to the ground on your belly when you come down from plank to chataranga--correct sanskit spelling here, i do not know--, he asked incredulously? Did you know you are supposed to hold your body four inches off the ground? Everybody in our class just comes crashing down.)

Today he came to my class at the Y and we did yoga side-by-side, panting in each other's ears, sticking our knees and elbows in each other's faces, and throwing each other off balance in half-moon. But he was great! He did three back bends and held his planks. His form is getting better and better. When he went to see his friend for lunch his friend said, "You look more rested than you have in years!"

He had the yoga glow.