Holding On, Letting Go

After wandering around in a not-quite depressed but semi-fugue state for the past couple of weeks, today I finally got my cognitive wits about me enough to sit down at my computer and get some work done. I sent a message to all of my staff alerting them to this rare state of affairs and encouraging them to take advantage of my current willingness to actually do stuff, in case they had any requests. For better or worse, I am the resident web master (ha), and with upwards of 15 instructors we have frequent need for online revisions, updates, and announcements.

My relationship with yoga in all of its incarnations has been subject to some pretty hefty challenge the past year. The practice is not just a part of my physical, spiritual, and community life. I also wear the professional hats of instructor, owner of a studio offering over 30 weekly classes, and Director of West Virginia’s premiere Registered Yoga School, the first in-state resource for motivated yogis to receive industry-approved 200-hour training to become yoga teachers. Cancer has swarmed these realities with a flurry of confused chaos, has dared me to keep my breath steady within my own practice, let alone within the capacity of instructor, and as the leader of this gentle, generous pack.

As my body has forced me to rest, I’ve allowed the physical practice to take a backseat to meditation, mantra, and what I like to call the yoga of everything. For the most part I’ve been able to keep my teaching schedule since being diagnosed, but last year, with several students already registered, I was forced to cancel teacher training, what I consider to be the true capstone of my yoga career so far. I was convinced, determined, utterly compelled to not let that happen again this year.

So today, when I sat down to update my webpage, I paused in front of the computer and looked with an unspeakably soft heart at the picture of my first graduating class, their nine incredible faces radiating the perfect advertisement for my next training scheduled to start October 1. I highlighted the picture, paused with the cursor hovering over it, and then put my face in my hands and allowed myself to sob before finally deleting the image from the site and officially canceling the training.

I understand that cancer will not take everything from me, that whatever I need will always be there in abundance, just like it always has been. Right now I have no choice but to let it borrow what it needs, and to accept the rugged lessons that come with the struggle. For now, my challenge is to pace myself as I stumble through this unlit minefield, pausing when I need to catch my breath, letting go of the things I continue to insist define me, while beginning to step into the truths yoga has taught me for so many years, in so many ways.

It is through yoga that I understand I am not my yoga, my business, my body. I simply am. Nothing more, nothing less. This level of letting go, forced as it has been, is burnishing whatever good lives within me, of that I am sure. In yoga we love our Rumi. He tells us, “Suffering is a gift. In it is hidden mercy.” I believe this, and invite it in, to settle into the cracks left by loss, to remind me that I am still whole.