The Yoga Mama

I did my first yoga yesterday.  I am so glad there were no cameras there.  "Put your hands up, squat, twist your arms around, bend one leg over the other, hold..."  Yikes!  The only thing that saved me were the other women in the room who were hopping on one foot and letting out "oofs" and "ouches".

I was attending a lecture by a young lady who had come through a terrible life circumstance and, finding her way out, found relief through the practice of yoga.  She was sharing her journey with us.  Her early life was my story, of feeling the odd child out, low self esteem, afraid of social situations.  Yes, my old friends, I was, although I hid it by helping the hostess or jumping into the caterer's kitchen.  Tears came to my eyes as I listened to this woman and wouldn't you know it, I had cleaned out my purse and had no tissues.  Our life situations eventually diverged, she into some dark stuff, mine into quiet desperation.  Both of us found healing by different paths, but healing none the less.

She talked about energy coming from the sun above, and up from the earth below.  Sun and earth are life.  Without them we do not live.  We straightened our spines and aliened our bodies so the 'chi' could flow unimpeded from head to toe.  We raised our arms and looked upwards to receive the light that was flowing down.  We squatted down (ow ow ow), closed our eyes and breathed deeply fixing a wish in our minds that we would like accomplished in our lives.  She spoke about getting rid of life distractions like TV and self medicating substances.

One thought that went through my head was, "This is the thing my church has warned against.  Giving entrance to evil spirits.  A useless practice that hippies and hippies do instead of knowing the living God."

And then I thought, wait, everything I've done so far has a correlation to my faith practice. 

Could it possibly be that we're talking about the same thing from different viewpoints using different words?

As a Christian I do believe life comes from 'above', from God.  I do believe His Holy Spirit flows through me if I open myself up to Its power.  Aliening my spine is a health practice, not mumbo jumbo.  When I pray I can't help raising my arms and touching my heart, it makes me breath deeply (which is also a health practice).  I kneel to pray and through prayer I lift my needs to God, fixing them in my mind, expecting my needs to be met.  Is cutting down my TV time a bad thing?  Is my Christian faith the stuff of hippies and evil spirits?

I think that in a lot of life we're speaking the same language, using different motions. Its the blind men and the elephant, each touching a different part and thinking that part was the whole.  If I believe God is all, over us, around us, through us (like the chi) then I have to believe people are more alike than different and their ways of expressing God their part of the whole.

I liked the yoga.  Felt good when I got home.  More energy.  So we'll see.