Yoga Tales from Rural Maine: Double Yoga Thursday

In the "bad news" column: I have a migraine on Double Yoga Thursday.

In the "good news" column: In my first class, I felt like I didn't serve my students with as much potency, grace, or presence today, what with the invisible axe that was lodged in my brain matter and the near-fainting spell that caused me to bring us all down to the floor--and quick!--so teacher would not be found unconscious. 

But, despite my own internal sense of not being a graceful teacher today, after class, one of the students who's never said anything in particular about how the class feels to him, sat for a long time observing his shoe after class, without putting it on, a look of peaceful contemplation on his bespectacled face. His shoe was here; he was elsewhere. 

He turned his sweet face up to me when I walked by, and he said, with a far-away look and a tender smile, "You...are a poet..." and he held his forgotten shoe and smiled at me, eyes sparkling; his smile was so profound that it seemed to come not only just from his lips or even his face; it felt like even that one stockinged foot was smiling up at me. "You are a poetess...," he said and sort of trailed off, still smiling, still looking in my eyes, unable to really find more words to express how he was feeling.

What remarkable good fortune it is, to feel like a grenade has gone off in one's brain and to still receive that level of grace from a student.

I have the best job in the world.

Holding up the sun in Costa Rica.