Yoga is a Prayer

by Kellyn McGee

My holiday season normally begins in mid-November with the Thanksgiving office party, and continues until the end of the year, with parties on top of parties, which, along with all the other holiday planning, can be dizzying. This year, though…well, we all know it’s different. Those parties and brunches and dinners don’t exist and have been added to the list of “when do we return to normal?” So, it should be easy to just use this time to do all that inner-work that we know is important, right? We have more time to be alone with ourselves and really listen to what’s going on inside, yes?

Being forced into stillness doesn’t equal embracing it. We might even be running from it, filling the void with activities that block the quiet. Binge-watching, bingereading, binge-cooking… these might be just the distractions we need to ignore the stillness we need more. Even if we know somewhere deep inside that all this time of “stay at home” has presented us with the perfect opportunity to go within, that’s easier thought than done. We might even balk at the idea of doing the inner-work, maybe even thinking “all I’m doing is being with myself.”

But being alone isn’t the same as going “in.”

It’s essential for us to quiet the voices, especially the internal ones that have ramped up the volume since March. But how? How do we return to internal stillness when we’re likely spending more time with ourselves than we have been in a long time — even if we live with others? Why do we need to be deliberate about spending time with ourselves when that’s what we’re doing most of most days?

It’s important to “go in” to get to the heart of who we are. Reconnecting with ourselves, regularly, helps quiet the noise of outside influences.

I meditate. I journal. I get on my mat. I’m not saying those are always the easiest to do. In fact, I sometimes have to talk myself into doing each of them. Especially because I know that going in can bring up thoughts and feelings I’m avoiding or I didn’t realize were there.

For me, all three of these practices are “yoga.” They each provide space to listen… and leave. (The “leaving it on the mat” has been a little difficult for me this year especially because I’m also teaching weekly and sometimes “that’s a good idea for class” gets in the way of just practicing for myself. One of my teachers suggested journaling right after I practice and that’s helped me release whatever didn’t get through during it.) I rarely re-read journal entries. I don’t mentally replay my meditation sessions. The revisiting of these practices isn’t where the work happens. The work comes in the stillness of the practice. Allowing myself to sit, free write, or move my body, without being in conversation with my thoughts lets them flow without my input and then they just float on. This isn’t to say they don’t float their way back sometimes. But in the stillness (even in a moving yoga practice) the thoughts are free to roam and I’m free to let them without reacting or responding. This, though, is a practice. I’m not perfect at it. But the more I do it, the better I’ve become.

In all of these practices that get me toward stillness, the breath is key. Whether my breathing is the focal point I need to get my mind into meditation, or whether it is staccato when I’m journaling my emotions, or whether it’s cued by a yoga teacher, turning to my inhales and exhales brings calmness, stillness.

As I’m finishing the final edits on this message, I’m thinking about two quotes that came into my orbit recently. One is from Marshawn Evans Daniels: “Isn’t it interesting that stillness was our first home but now it can seem oh so foreign and difficult to find? We start out in our mother’s womb, a place of incubation and quiet perfection. But then something changed.” The other is the first line of a poem by Joy Harjo that one of my yoga teachers shared during her classes: “Remember the sky that you were born under....”

I invite each of you to stop for a few minutes, take a deep inhale in, slowly let it out, repeat several times. And remember that we were born into stillness, under a still sky. We can — and should - return there as often as we like, as often as we can.