As I write this, I have just completed my 200 hours of yoga teacher training; I am officially a certified yoga teacher. Years ago, I started practicing yoga simply as a way to get exercise.
How many stories start like that? How many people fall into yoga because it promises to do something for their physical body…and then they realize that perhaps it was their emotional body that needed the yoga most of all.
One of, if not the, most
important and powerful lessons I have learned in my yoga practice and
throughout yoga teacher training is the idea of impermanence. All things,
all beings - whether material or mental are in continuous change. Nothing
is permanent. Nothing lasts.
Initially, this doctrine felt a bit morose. Why bother if nothing lasts? If nothing stays? If everything and every one is going to die? How depressing. And yet. As I thought about it more, and I began to understand the concept further I found myself taking great comfort in this belief.
Nothing will last.
Nothing is permanent.
Nothing lasts so therefore I must be present with each moment as it comes; be fully aware because I only have it. Nothing is guaranteed beyond the moment that I am currently in. I must notice what is here, what is now, because it will be gone - in an hour, a day, a week, a season, a year, ten years.
I recall during some of my initial yoga classes that the instructor would tell us as we all settled down for Shavasana that in this moment, we had everything we needed, that everything was perfect. Admittedly, I struggled with this notion quite a bit initially. I had eight million emails I hadn’t answered! My car payment was due! What in the world was I going to eat for dinner when I hadn’t been to the grocery store in over a week? Eventually though, it dawned on me. All of those thoughts, all of those to-do lists that I thought were the present actually weren’t. The present was me, lying on my yoga mat in a darkened space. Breathing. That was my current moment, my present perfection. And in that moment, I had everything I needed.
No thing will last.
No one is permanent.
I find that knowing this and recognizing it and remembering it somehow helps me navigate through my days, my life. It forces me to notice and sincerely appreciate the good, the beautiful, the tiny every day moments of joy and amazement that surround me daily. This will not last - notice it now.
(My Dad, picking me up at the airport, climbing out of his car to give me a hug curbside. My Mom, sitting at her kitchen table, laughing over a comment I made. The sunlight pouring into my bedroom. My hands curled around a mug of hot coffee. My friends, gathered together for a dinner out, sipping red wine and laughing together. My cat, curled up on the sofa, soaking up the winter sun rays. The little girls who live next door to my mother, elated to be coming over to bake chocolate chip cookies. The old friend I have known for almost 30 years, her voice warm and loving on the other end of the phone. My beloved yoga studio, our classes, coming together for a brief moment in time. Breathing. Moving. Stretching.)
Recognizing what is perfect in this moment.
Oh, impermanence can make me terribly sad sometimes too, of course it does. The people I love most in the world will not be here for forever. I will not be here for forever. Pets I love with my whole heart will not be always by my side. The flowers that bloom, the trees that grow, the birds that sing outside my window will all one day cease to exist. Jobs, apartments, home, communities, family, friends. They will be here; then they won’t. And that breaks my heart. Sometimes the weight of knowing this truth, of trying to grasp all that it really means can feel like too much to bear and my soul feels heavy.
And yet, in the same breath that makes me sad, the one which brings me pause thinking of what will not last, I feel comfort too. These lessons help me get through the ugly, the hurtful, the trying, the heartache. This too shall pass - learn the lesson it is teaching you and know it cannot last forever. Impermanence doesn't make the hurt any less, nor the heartache disappear, but in the darkest, saddest moments it can offer a glimmer of hope, of help. The hard stuff is still very hard. Hurtful. Yet knowing that this hurt cannot last, this heartache will have to turn eventually helps. It has to help.
(Those hurtful words hurled at you, that ugly argument, that angry scene. A break-up. Bad dynamics. The mean boss. That rude grocery store clerk. The cruel outlier you cannot be rid of. The upheaval, the uncertainty, the scary, the sad. It must leave eventually, it cannot stay. Nothing lasts.)
In my readings for yoga teacher training, I came across the Sanskrit word Santosha, meaning contentment, satisfaction. I read that TKV Desikachar describes the meaning of Santosha as accepting what happens; the notion of simply accepting what life offers you and learning from it. It is also accepting ourselves just as we are. There’s no need for me to be different than I am, and there’s no need for my life to be any different in this moment.
It is a practice, this recognition of Impermanence, this striving for Santosha.
But I am a
practice, a work in progress.
Sometimes, most times, I feel so grateful for this life, this journey, this moment that I can barely believe it.
(There. Look at
how pretty those tulips look sitting on your bedside table. Or there,
witness that random act of kindness, a man holding the T door for a woman
scurrying to make the train during rush hour and her breathless thank you as
she boards. Or there, look at the toddler running in the park, so proud
of how his little legs carry him. There, that favorite scarf wrapped
tightly around your shoulders, keeping you warm, providing comfort. Or
there, the birds outside your window flitting in and out of the bare tree,
singing their songs. There, the sun rising and day dawning.)
And it builds from there. It builds and it builds and it's fleeting and impermanent but all so beautiful and amazing and simple and completely wonderful.
It is all there is. It is perfect in this moment.
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