Yeah, I do that

Tonight I dragged a friend from work with me to a new yoga class I've been wanting to try. It's not at the community yoga studio I usually go to – it's at the ashram, which I finally (after how many years now?) have realized is actually very, very close to where I live.

So we went, and it was so beautiful there, with gardens and flowers and lovely reflecting pools and waterfalls and little personal-sized temples you can sit in and so on, and the class was very nice as well, and at the end of the class the teacher was talking to my friend – a hard-working, always overbooked mom of two – about ways to work practice into her day.

"One thing that will help more than anything is to just carve out some time for yourself right when you get home from work," she said. "Even just five minutes. Just go in your room and close the door and lay down on the bed and breathe for just five minutes, just like we did at the end of class. It will transform your life."

And I didn't say anything at the time, because I didn't want to make the conversation all about me, but since this is my place to be shamelessly self-absorbed and self-promoting I wanted to say that yeah, she is SO right about that – and I know because yeah, I do that. Every night without fail.

And I didn't think of it all by myself, either – Tater taught me. Every night when I get home from work he runs into the bedroom and jumps up on the bed, where he sits staring at me intensely until I lie down with him to spend several minutes breathing and snuggling together. It seems like such a small thing, but we really do do this every single night, and it really is like a mini-practice – and it really does make a huge difference in how I feel.

If I ever try to Not do it – if I'm in a hurry to get dinner started, for example – he pushes his eyebrows together and tilts his head to the side and makes a little questioning sound, like "Hmm?" Why is this moment of ours together suddenly not as important to you as any other moment in your day?

And I realize that it IS important. And so I do it.





These pictures are from my ride home from the ashram tonight. They're all taken within a few minutes walk from my house, but since this part of the road is on the other side of the creek, I don't usually go home that way. After tonight though I think I'm going to start, at least until the creek fills up with water again. (Plus, I have some friends who just moved into a place up around there, so there's another incentive to go that way more often.)

To get home this way I have to bush-whack it a bit where the road ends, and carry my bike across the creekbed and back out through more bushes on the other side, to where the road picks up again about a hundred yards from my house. Except for the fact that it makes getting home that way harder for me, I'm actually glad that road doesn't cross the creek, because it means almost no traffic on our road. It dead ends about a half-mile past our house.

Anyway. Riding my bike around quiet roads in the sunset light of a warm August evening has been one of my favorite things in the world to do since I was a young teenager, and doing it again tonight I realized (again) how much I really, really, really love my life, and love where I live.