"Home" Practice

Almost every morning, I wake up early and practice at the shala, where my lovely community also practices. And there, together, with our teacher, we engage what is almost a dance of yoga. A diversity of paces, breaths, transitions into asanas...but somehow synchronized with meaning and devotion. The warmth of the room envelopes us, our beloved teacher attends to each one of us individually and as a community, and we all drink in the sweetness of the practice.

My daughter still wakes up at least once per night, and I have grown accustomed to it. The fatigue sort of washes over me when I hear her calling for us, but it seems to fall away when I am rocking her back to sleep. And usually I find my way back to my own sleep, and I rise early for practice.

But yesterday the fatigue kind of stayed with me all day, and by afternoon I was cached and ill. This morning, I let my body sleep, and I woke up to practice at home.

Practicing at home (sung to the tune of "Gardening at Night" by REM) is a quiet conversation. And it seems to me that it is quite close to the heartbeat of Ashtanga. Apart from my community, I hear only my own breath. Without my teacher near, I practice without an audience other than myself, and that audience tries not to watch too closely...it tries to be still. Because I have been working on quickening my pace, I sometimes practice with Sharath's voice. His pace is fast, but his voice is gentle, and it calms me. The smell of the room is new, it's not quite as warm, my mat is at the shala and so I practice on my other mat. I can hear the floor creak beneath me. And it seems, quite profoundly, actually, that my home is not my yoga home at all...the shala is my home for practice.

But even that is not quite so. The body is the home for practice, and practice can travel anywhere. Later this week, I will be practicing in a hotel in Louisville, Kentucky. I have practiced by a hotel pool, in my college neighbor's living room, on the 25th floor of the Custom House in Boston, in my niece's room next to her white princess bed, on the landing between the two second-floor bedrooms in my mother-in-law's home, on the lawn by the lake on a beach towel in Western Maine, in segments between nursings next to my daughter's Moses basket, in my sister's dining room, and on my aunt's porch. The practice adapts, the body adapts. And those scratchy white towels can be a mat on a sketchy motel carpet.

But I will be glad to be at the shala in the morning.