Day 26: Yoga Epiphany

Tonight was 530 with Anastashia. What a great class. She had the room temp perfect and her dialog/timing were right on. She was also very encouraging and called out a "perfect michelle" as I nailed a solid standing bow. My body: strong, flexible, amazing. I have never felt this strong in my entire life. I've done athletic things before. I was a swimmer for many years and also ran cross country. But this all over strength I feel is nothing like I have ever felt before. Not even in my two previous 60 day challenges. Wow. I'm just humbled at how amazing it is to be lucky enough to feel this way. Interestingly enough, my friend Kim said in the locker room afterwards "that was awful, I thought she was trying to kill us". I looked at her and said, "Oh, I didn't think so, I felt good today". So it really is not the teacher so much as the day we are having, and everybody is different every day in that room.
Interestingly enough, as I was riding my breath, in and out of very strong postures, my mind was not focused at all. It was all over the place. I know I've alluded to having some things weigh heavy on my heart in previous posts, and well, that hasn't changed. There is alot going on in my silly noggin' right now. So my mind was on absolute overdrive. I thought I was going to blow a gasket. It was just silly. But something else was working in the background, like an adult watching a small child go crazy on the playground, another piece of me was quietly guiding me through my practice and patiently allowing my mind to process whatever it felt like processing. Then something happened. I had a sort of "yoga epiphany". This happens once in a great moon. I was in locust posture, once again, as I wrote about yesterday enjoying my incredible progress of getting my pelvis off the floor along with my legs and coming down slowly, very strong. During second set my mind said "wow, this is cool, but how do I start to get my chest off the ground, get to that next step". And I suddenly realized this: "hey, I just got here, breathe, focus and keep making sure you can sustain doing this and stop worrying about the next step. Don't focus on what is next or what you hope for so much that you don't notice and accept what is." And then my mind was quiet, because it knew I wasn't talking about yoga anymore.