Stretching on the Web

I was at a meditation
retreat last week. Do you know what they’re like? Grainy, leafy food in
portions your pet fish couldn’t survive on, no
talking, no reading, no car keys, no wallet, no calling home. It isn’t
Club Med.

Just meditating, dawn ’till after dusk. It
can be lonely. But some fantastic things happen.   

Here

is one very cool thing.  Picture this: 5am, maybe.  (No
watches.)  Still dark out, anyway. I come out of my room each
morning, slowly and silently, and head toward the meditation hall,
dressed in pajamas.

As I walk down the hall, every third or fourth door opens, and
another person in pajamas comes out, quietly closing a door behind her.
 We look like something from a zombie movie, except that some
of the zombies have mats under their arms.

We walk in bare feet to the hall where we each pick a spot on the
floor. We begin our practice. All you can hear
is breathing and the soft thuds of feet jumping forward and back. It’s
impromptu Mysore.  No one organized or announced it.

It goes on for perhaps forty minutes, people drifting in and out of
the hall.  All of this happens before we begin meditating for the day.

And,

holy mackerel, even though we don’t speak, don’t even look at each
other for the most part, even though we’re about to begin another
grueling day of seated meditation, I am deliriously happy.

I don’t want to leave the impression that meditating
is awful from start to finish. Other very cool things that
happen on these retreats are an empty, quiet head and a sense of peace
that will knock you over if you let it.  I love it. Days later I can
still feel it.

I feel a need to express some thanks to these
zombie yogis. They were my family away from home.  We showed up for each
other first thing in the morning on days when it
mattered.

So to these men and women I don’t know, and to the ones I do know
but didn’t say a word to: thank you, thank you, thank you.You
made meditating a little easier, and you made me fall in love with yoga
all over again.

It’s 7:30 in the morning, and my phone rings.  It’s my sister sounding like an undercover cop on surveillance: whispery voice, hand cupped over the phone, shifty eyes.

“I really love yoga,” she says. “You have no idea how much I love yoga right now.”

She’s a new yoga junkie. It happens. We arrive here from other sports, other pastimes, other loves, and we fall into yoga like matter into black holes.

I’ll bet you’ve had these hushed conversations. 

“What about running?” I asked a yoga friend when he first fell. “I dunno,” he said. “I don’t want to run as much. It doesn’t help my yoga.” This, from marathon runner to marathon runner.

“I’m supposed to ride tomorrow, and all I want to do is go to yoga,” my sister continues. “I know,” I say. “I know the feeling.”

“I can jump through to a seated position,” she says. “Learned that last night.” 

“Oh yeah,” I say, knowingly. “That’s good.”

“And I’m starting to get that thing about lifting my heart without sticking my front ribs out. You have no idea how good that is.”

“Oh yeah?” I say.

“Oh yeah,” she confirms. “And another thing: did I mention that my knees don’t hurt when I’m walking to work, now? Did I mention that?”

Yeah, you did, but that’s okay.

“You have no idea how good that is,” she persists.

I don’t want to scare anybody, but this is the way you begin to talk to the people you love. You can go on running, cycling, and all the rest of it. No one’s going to stop you, but you might love this yoga thing more than you thought.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Thanks to yoga for the inspiration, and thanks to you for the conversation.