Hello. It’s been a while.
This is at least the third time in 16 months that I’ve sat down at my desk to return to my practice of writing an essay to explore the many ways – many so small as to seem trivial – that I draw yoga, mindfulness, and faith into my daily life. Each time I have done so, life has taken me in another direction.
Allowing myself to be redirected from my plans has, itself, become a practice of sorts for me over the last many months. This is something to perhaps unpack in a future essay. Right now, though, it’s the word “return” that glimmers for me in the idea that “I think I’d like to return to writing essays regularly.”
The reality is that the idea of going back to “the way things were before” doesn’t feel at all interesting to me. I’ve lived a lot of life in the last year and a half, and that life has changed me. Like my senior prom dress (which I loved – a lot), I suspect if I tried on “the way things were before” they would not fit me now.
Beginning anew
I’m much more interested in moving forward – in beginning anew. Which, it turns out, is something my life has given me lots of practice doing. I’ve been teaching Yoga Philosophy at a local university since 2017. When I “returned” to my classroom a few weeks ago for another new semester, it marked my fifteenth beginning.
Although I’m teaching the same course, not one of these beginnings has felt like a return to the way things were. After all, I’m teaching a brand-new group of students. I have names to learn and interests to explore, writing styles as well as physical abilities and limitations to discover. Over the course of 14 weeks, these new students will grapple with and interpret the philosophy and practice that I am sharing with them in their own unique ways. Because of this, every time I teach it, this course is an entirely new and exciting experience.
This is where the idea of “beginning anew” comes in. Because unlike the fall semester of 2017, I am not walking into my classroom wondering somewhat uneasily if the course I’ve written will work. Each new beginning is informed by the past. I have the benefit of knowing what did and did not work. I know what captured my students’ attention and what fell flat. I know what energized me and depleted me.
Allowing things to change
Each time I teach the course, it gets a little better. For this to happen, I have to be willing to allow things to change. Each semester, I have to acknowledge (as my daughter’s fabulous first grade teacher taught), “that the biggest room in every house is the room for improvement.” I have to allow my students, my studies, and my own practices to change what and how I teach. I have to allow my understanding of the philosophy that I teach to continue to unfold for me. I have to resist the very human instinct to cling to what “works” in order to make space for growth and improvement.
It is not just the start of the semester that is a beginning for me. Each of the 28 classes I teach throughout a semester is a beginning of its own. All these beginnings have made me certain in the uncertain. I can show up with a plan (in fact, it is critical that I do), but if I cling to that plan rather than allow the class to take its course, my students and I will miss out on untold riches as we grapple together with our topic that day.
Every moment is a beginning if we let it be one
Being able to see the grace and the possibility contained in beginning and, especially, in beginning anew is a gift of the yoga philosophy that I teach and try to live by. The very first verse of The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali reads:
Atha yoga anusassanam.
Now begins the teaching of yoga.
Now. Every moment is a beginning to be embraced and explored.
For most of us, embracing and exploring each moment as a beginning is something we have to choose. It’s especially hard when this moment is not as we expected it to be. Or when we’d like very much to hang on to how things were just a minute ago.
Over and over again, we have to open our hearts and heads to life as it is – rather than as we planned or wanted it to be – and to know that each moment is a gift. And that each next moment – the expected and the unexpected – are also ours to receive and to squeeze the juice out of.
This moment right now is enough
A prayer by Thomas Merton comes to mind:
My Lord God, I have no idea where I’m going. I do not see the road ahead of me. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
It pleases me to be writing this essay today and to imagine you reading it later this week. It pleases me to be beginning anew. While it’s not 100% comfortable, I find that, as I am each time I walk into my classroom, I am willing to not know exactly where this beginning is headed. I find that I’m willing to allow it to unfold as it will moment to moment.
Even if just for atha (now, this moment), it pleases me that you and I are connected again.