Yoga Tales from Rural Maine: The art of being alone

I was in love once, long ago, with a man who had mastered the art of being alone in a crowd. He was a drummer and his band was touring almost 200 dates a year. This meant that he was almost never alone. He was always on stage, in a bar, in a restaurant, in a van, sharing a hotel room...I asked him about it once. How could he stand it, never being alone? He said it was okay, because he had mastered the art of being alone in a crowd.

Yoga is like this. Yoga gives us a chance to practice radical aloneness. We become aware of our separateness; we notice our own bodies; our own breath; our own thoughts. We put our own two feet on our own yoga mats. We close our eyes and in the darkness, we have only our Selves.

But it is through this radical aloneness that we can access the most radical form of togetherness. In the same way that my drummer could be by himself in a crowded room, so too can the yogi. We can be alone any time, any where, under any circumstances. And at the same time, even as we turn our focus inward, we are aware of our indivisibility. We are only ever us; we are never only us. Both things are true at once. We can turn to whichever one we need, in the same way we might turn over our pillow to find the cool side.

Each breath is our own beautiful breath. At the same time, each breath is the breath of Everything and Everybody--the breath of the trees, of the ocean, of our friend and of our enemy; the breath of our teacher and of our teacher's teacher; the breath of the very Earth itself.

"Yoga" is the union of body, mind, and spirit. Every time we step onto a yoga mat, we are a drummer in the great band of life, stepping into a sea of humans, and turning our focus inward. We master the art of being alone, so that we might know that we never truly are.

Alone. Together. In an L.A. hotel room.

Yoga Tales from Rural Maine: Namaste

I nearly canceled class tonight. I have been coping with the residue of an act of personal violence (against me), and I'm having a hard time navigating the mixture of anger and grief. I was experiencing so much of my own anguish, that I felt I couldn't possibly be of service to my students tonight.

I was afraid that if I tried to teach, I might just start weeping, and what would happen to my students then?

But when I imagined that, what I knew of my students was that we would support one another and learn and love and practice and it would be okay, no matter what I brought to my mat. It would even be okay if I simply began practice by saying, "My friends...I feel so sad." My students would have taught me what to do and we would have been alright.

So, I went to class. And this is maybe the truly magic part, the part I can rely on every week: things got better.

No matter what is going on with me, no matter how sick or tired or sad or angry or sore or lost I feel, when I step into my teaching space, literally and figuratively; when my yoga teacher self arrives and occupies my body and my mind, this beautiful thing happens. I feel well. I feel beautiful, the kind of beauty that lives on the surface of a sparkling pond in Maine in August.

And, bless them, tonight as always--every single one--my students brought Light with them. They showed up, for starters. They were happy to see me. More than half the people in the room told me a story about how they almost didn't come, but then they felt a strong faith that they should come; or providence intervened and a noise woke them from a nap just in time. My students were there, on their mats, smiling, sharing their news, being together in this lovely little community, this "Kula" we have built for ourselves out of lovingkindess and sticktoitiveness.

I sat on my mat in the training room of a volunteer fire department in the small town where I grew up, and I didn't feel like crying any more. I felt like teaching. And taking care. And being where I was.

So that's what I did.

And I think we all left feeling better for it.

My theme tonight was "Namaste." The word, the concept, the practice. My darling students, tonight especially, The Light in Me Salutes the Light in You.

Namaste, my friends. Namaste.

Yoga Tales from Rural Maine: What Yoga with Naomi is all about

If you are looking for someone to "complete" you, then you will draw to you someone who sees you as incomplete. I recommend against this. No matter how broken you feel, you are an intact, complete, beautiful being.

Yoga allows us to experience this first hand. The word "yoga" means "union." Yogis understand this as meaning the union of body, mind, and spirit. I often describe it in class as a "reunion."

If you have gotten lost from your awareness of yourself, you don't need another being to complete you. You need a reunion with yourself.

Yoga with Naomi is a practice of constant, ongoing, reunion. I welcome you--all of you, the full completeness of you--to practice each class, and then you have the opportunity to reunite with yourself. You may feel broken in body, mind, or spirit; most of us do. All due respect to the writers of "Jerry Maguire," but the answer is not in finding a life-mate who completes you. It is in remembering and re-experiencing that you are whole, exactly as you are.

Preparing to teach a bridal shower yoga class in East Orland.