When I got up the next day, snow had fallen!
It's funny how in an instant you can be carried back in time to your childhood. When I was a kid the first snow of the year was exciting. It meant we might get to stay home from school. And playing in the snow was a blast.
Looking out from my hotel room at the white blanket covering the city got me excited once again...even though I knew I wouldn't be playing that day.
Later I went to church. It was a Holy Day. At the end of the mass, the priest acknowled two members of the parish, both of them adult men. He called them by name and announced that today was the first time they had ever seen snow!
Imagine that!
The whole crowd burst into applause. We were all, young and old, excited for them.
No one asked if they'd shoveled, or got stuck, or if they were too cold. Nobody asked about the pains of dealing with snow. But they both smiled wide and admitted, when asked, that they had played in the snow.
I stood there for awhile and tried to imagine the extraordinary series of events that must have taken place for these two men to start their lives in some place far away with different names, a different language, different climate, and a completely different lifestyle, yet end up here in the middle of the United States as adults, only to lie down on their backs on a cold December morning to make snow angels!It boggled my mind. But it also gave me hope. The odds that they could have made such a transition must surely have been slim. But they did it.
Before you get down on your mat today to practice, I'd like you to imagine. Open your heart and your thoughts to the possibility of an extraordinary series of events. Add a little excitement, too. The kind of excitement you feel on the first snow day of the year--looking forward to fun.
I'm not sure why you do yoga. But sometimes I can go a long time without getting from yoga what I want. So it's easy to get callous and disinterested.
I can get down on my mat and have a very "adult" view of it. Like looking out the window at snow and thinking my car might not start, or traffic will be a hassle, or I might be late for work, or I just won't warm up today, or yuk, I've got to shovel.
It works better when I get down on my mat and think that today I might have a blast. I might have a great breakthrough. I might end up so far away from where I started that I can't begin to imagine it. But I'm open to it. I'm open to the flow of Grace in my life and on my mat.
Enjoy.
Don't just read about it. Get up. Experience it. Experience yoga!
Kevin Perry
http://www.experienceyoga.org/
p.s.,
Many of you know that Thursday was the 25th anniversary of the death of John Lennon. In his memory, I leave you with a lyric I really like:Imagine all the peoplep.s.s., Imagine it's President's Day 2006. You've just finished a two-hour morning yoga class. You feel great. You step out of the thatch-roof yoga room, slip on your sandals and walk across the beach to the palapa for a breakfast of freshly squeezed orange juice, home-made yogurt and granola, fresh pineapple and mangos that have never been on a shelf in a grocery store or shipping container. You're beginning another fabulous day in Yelapa, Mexico, enjoying new friends, and drinking in the surf with your eyes.
Sharing all the world.
You may say Im a dreamer,
but I'm not the only one,
I hope some day you'll join us,
And the world will live as one.
I'll be there on President's Day. And the whole week, too. You can come with us. I guarantee there will be no snow in Yelapa that week.
Don't miss our unbelievably beautiful Experience Paradise yoga vacation in Yelapa, Mexico, Feb 18-25, 2006. You'll never forget this fabulous vacation and yoga experience. Find out more at http://experienceyoga.org/vacations.asp.
Copyright 2005. All rights reserved, Mo Yoga LLC.
