Noticing Change

I am stuck in a Carole King song. The earth moved under my feet early in the week, and Saturday the sky came tumbling down. I was just minutes back to work from Ridiculously Gentle yoga on Tuesday when the earth belched in Virgina and the buildings shuddered in North Carolina. Saturday I am huddled in my house, windows wide open, riding out the far edge of Hurricane Irene. I don't wish harm to anyone or to their property, but selfishly I am loving this. Rain hammered on the roof all night long, but stopped at dawn. I am glad at noon when it rains again. (I am a true north-westerner. I love me some rain.) The garden loves the all-night rain, too. This morning there are blooms on flowers that had been dried up. Everything is bigger, stronger, and brighter.

But moving on to my personal storm track.

Finding it increasingly hard to get to my favorite yoga class on Mondays, the last couple of weeks I have resorted to a Tuesday class, the above mentioned Ridiculously Gentle gentle yoga. But always when I go to an unfamiliar class with an unfamiliar teacher, I learn something new--when I can get over the class being too easy or too Not Julie. There is a lot of stretching in gentle yoga, and especially in the Ridiculously Gentle class. As we move from one hip opener to the next, holding each for several breaths, Carol gently says, "Notice the change." And I do notice. I am opening up more with each pose, and not just in my hips.

Stillness. Sometimes it’s uncomfortable to be still. No earbuds, no FaceBook, no texting, no book, no TV, no knitting. So maybe the poses aren’t challenging, but maybe the lack of movement is. Maybe having to notice the change is. In vinyasa, which my classes don’t do much of--thank god--one pose flows quickly to the next. I am always looking ahead to the next moment, so I don't have to think about the one I'm in. In RG yoga, I don’t know what’s coming next. I am forced to feel my discomfort. What anxiety or dread is lurking Deep Down Inside that I keep at bay by staying one step ahead of it so it can’t rise to my notice? How can I get to a Deep Down better place, if I don’t let the dis-ease make itself known? Maybe I should keep going to the Ridiculously Gentle class.

And then along came Friday. Favorite Julie's beginning yoga. I go to this class because I feel I need the challenge, not because I enjoy it. And this week is the hardest class I have been to since I started my yoga practice. (At least that is what it seems like on Friday.)  Too many lunges, I can't like lunges. And too much vinyasa. It is painful; there isn't time to breathe. I feel incompetent. And old. Tell me why I was complaining about the RG class being too "easy"? And it doesn't help that I am late and get stuck in front of the door. Very much not feng shui, and in an unaccustomed quadrant of the room to boot. All uncomfortable. And oh my god, what is this nonsense? I am right next to Yoga Goddess who has no bones in her body! I know you are supposed to ignore what your neighbor can do, but who can ignore YG? Excuse me? Is that her head between her calves, boobs to locked knees, wrists on the floor in her standard forward fold! No, it is not the knees that are supposed to be folded, as mine are. Is that her flat hand on the floor and her knee in her armpit in extended side angle? Good god. Are there no rules about who can be in a BEGINNING yoga class?

Like Claire Dederer (Poser: My Life in Twenty-three Yoga Poses), I insist to myself that I can't do chataranga, along with pretty much everything else we do in this class today. “What happens when you tell yourself that you can’t do something that you are asked to do over and over every day? The facts may be that you are strong; but it happens all the time: We make decisions about ourselves and our lives that are not based on fact… We go through our lives believing in [our] essential weakness.” So after I fail miserably on the whole vinyasa thing, and don't even try chataranga (because, you know, I can't do it) and just automatically let my knees intervene as I lower my "looks like the top of a push-up" body to the ground, we get to half moon pose. I'm so pissed at how hard this class is when I have had an unusual-for-a Friday frantic morning and really need a calming, renewing yoga class, that I forget I can't do half moon balancing pose, either. Ohmygod, I'm sort of doing it!


A friend is having a very hard time at work. She texts me late one night, reaching out because she knows I love her and care that there is a storm raging inside her. Too often we keep our pain to ourselves; feeling perhaps that reaching out is weak. We humans are just ridiculous sometimes. Later she says I helped her so much by being there. I say she helped herself by inviting me in. She feels better after sleep--we often do. But she pays
attention to her pain anyway. She doesn't let feeling better keep her from noticing that something has shifted in her. She makes a decision that will be forward movement in her journey. That's what letting ourselves be with pain can do. It can get us to the next place. It has been apparent in my life that movement comes far more readily during adversity and discomfort than during times of contentment. Be still and listen.


The idea for this post began Friday morning when Irene was churning toward North Carolina. As I go out for my early morning walk, I try to get Smudge the Cat to go out. She is usually at the door as soon as she has had a bit of breakfast, but this morning she hangs back, lounging on the coffee table. I finally get her to join me at the open door. She stands beside me and hisses at the exposure to the humid close air, and will not be coaxed out. Later I hear stories about the horses in Central Park and animals at the Washington Zoo and locally that were highly agitated several minutes before Tuesday's earthquake, even scores of miles from the epicenter. Animals notice subtle change. We humans have to be hit in the head with it, and even then don't always notice it. If we do we would just as soon ignore it. Like new yoga poses, change is painful. Or is pain just another name for whatever is unfamiliar in our lives?

I love weather, and I am addicted to TV coverage of unusual weather events. It is running in the background as Irene blows herself around outside. I moved the empty birdfeeder closer to the house and out of the elements Friday night, but birds of all size and hue are looking for it. So I fill it and move it back out for them. All afternoon cardinals, titmice, chickadees, blue jays, mourning doves, towhees, and thrashers dine. I feel like I should be providing wine and appetizers. I keep donning my rain jacket and going out to take pictures of the wind and rain. You really can't capture wind and rain. At least not with my camera. There is probably metaphor in that. Let me know what you come up with. A far away friend FaceBook chats with me this stormy day and shares with me, like my friend the other night, the storm swirling within her. I am thinking about both of these wonderful and strong friends--and feeling honored to be trusted with their personal storms--when Greg Fishel, the local TV meteorologist, states that which is hard to remember in the midst of a hurricane: “The storm always has to end.” Ride it out, then stop and listen to what it's telling you.