I have always known that I cannot be still, that I am always driven to move, to do, to be occupied with something, anything. I learned to cope with these traits a long time ago. I suspect that I was motivated, in all likelihood, by a teacher who dealt with my overly active behaviors by having me spend more than a little time standing in the corner of the classroom. I am blessed that my professional life offers challenges to keep me engaged and that my family life is busy and full and active. But, left to my own devices, I am often in perpetual motion. When I was home with COVID, I baked every ingredient in my kitchen into something and tucked it in the freezer to give away later. When I was recovering from back surgery, within a week I was walking around the block and, within 10 days, logging six miles a day, while doing conference calls through my earbuds. It is, for good or ill, who I am.

It’s been interesting, as I take my second yoga teacher certification training, to learn more about the history, and spiritual nature, of yoga. I often talk about movement (asana), when I teach, as really being a tool that we use to help free our minds, understanding that when our bodies are engaged, it leaves us free to think more deeply. But I find the stories of the well known yogis of the past, and their ability to truly meditate and find deep, meaningful paths, to be, while inspirational, so far from any practice I could ever imagine for myself. To be able to truly meditate, to find that place within, is extraordinary and, at the same time, incredibly foreign to the person that I am.

Even savasana, the quiet corpse pose at the end of class, is a struggle for me. I fight to keep my eyes closed, I work to lie still on the mat, my mind whirling in a thousand directions.

As I had that time for savasana today, at the end of a practice, I made an effort to stay in the moment, to let the quiet and the dark surround me and to try to drop into the experience. The words that came to me were like a poem, or perhaps a prayer. I thought, over and over, “out of the stillness comes,” and each time my answer was different. Out of the stillness comes commitment, out of the stillness comes energy, out of the stillness comes growth, out of the stillness comes peace. The list went on even after the savasana ended and it stayed with me. Even without my natural tendencies, we live “hamster wheel” lives. We all need to find ways to come back to the stillness, to give ourselves the space to renew and refresh and build, the space and stillness to fill our full hearts.