yoga

I laid on the mat, waiting for class to start. I tried to recall the last time I took a class, let alone live and in person from an instructor-I couldn't.
today was almost exactly 3 months since my major surgery, and I went right  from that into chemo treatment.  Before that, I'd had a combination of very low motivation, which I thought was depression (more likely from the tumor) and a fair amount of physical discomfort.

Also, the last time I practiced, I was 60 pounds heavier.

Many won't believe me, but there's no value judgment there.  I did my yoga teacher training in a bigger body and I'm a kick ass yoga teacher. Yoga is not fitness, it's a mind-body practice, about befriending ourselves, about finding our hearts again.  That doesn't depend on anything physical. My favorite folks to offer yoga practice to as a teacher are those who are convinced they can't do yoga. Sometimes because of physical limitations, sometimes because of the size or shape of their body. Nonsense. Anyone can do yoga.

I was aware that I'd actually never practiced with my body this size, and how different it was.
I was also painfully aware of this: I'd go back up 60 pounds in a heartbeat if it meant I didn't have aggressive, rare, metastatic cancer anymore.

The whole experience was kind of surreal; I hadn't done any yoga in person since COVID started, as I kept high precautions before cancer.  I was taking a yoga class for cancer patients/survivors. I was in a body profoundly different than the last time I formally practiced. I'd survived a 6-hour surgery and (so far) had two chemo treatments.
Pretty much everything seems surreal right now.

And my poor nervous system has been in trauma freeze since, well, I don't even know. A long time. The original CT scan that detected my 6-inch tumor was in early November, almost six months ago. After that: meeting with oncology, having a biopsy, a PET scan, scheduling the surgery, having the surgery, finding out the cancer had already spread (rapidly), gearing up for chemo.
And other big stressors had had me in low-grade freeze for, well, a few years before that.

The practice was a nice slow flow, not super challenging. Muscle memory did its thing, and it felt good.  It felt different than before, any time before, since my first yoga in my bedroom, to a cassette tape I'd checked out of the library, decades ago. Since the parks and recreation class at the local high school, since the many classes and retreats and workshops and year of teacher training I'd taken in the years since.

At one point, I heard this in my head, clear as day. I felt it in my bones.

YOU BELONG HERE.

YOU. BELONG. HERE.

Not here, in this class. 

Not here, in this practice. 

Not here, in this reality with cancer, with the world burning.

Here. In this body.

Most people, especially in the West, think yoga is about accomplishment. Being able to execute a pose, how it looks. Touching our toes, standing on one leg, standing on your head. The more. you can do, that others can see, the better. It's not (see above re: befriending ourselves, finding our hearts again).

I was once like most people, for a long time.  Sometimes, still.  I worked really hard, put a lot of energy into shifting my relationship to my yoga practice.  It was a struggle, still is.   But the intention is always there: reconnecting with myself. With my heart. Being in my body, un-freezing, for any period of time. That's part of the practice.

And today, I felt the shift. After nearly a year of not practicing, after a painstaking diagnostic process, a big risky surgery, and the news of aggressive spread of cancer...I felt myself connect to my own heart again. Something I'd not been able to do for a long time--you can't be in freeze and connect to your own heart. Freeze is meant to keep you away from the heart-it's a protective measure. Too scary to be in the heart, to be embodied.

Today, that shifted.
You. Belong. Here.