2020 Musings to Yoga Community

Dearest yoga community,

If you’re receiving this writing it’s because of a special place you hold in my heart. You are the reason I became a yoga teacher or more broadly why I stepped into a path of greater awareness. This year in particular, when there are so many online choices for streaming yoga classes, I am particularly grateful that you shared that time of inquiry with me. You are as much my teachers as my students.

This year, like no other in our lifetime, presented many opportunities for self-reflection. It’s much harder to run away from yourself when there are fewer external distractions. You may not have read as many books as you had promised yourself, you may not sit in meditation, or practice daily yoga but it was hard not to confront the very existential questions of life and death, systemic racism, economic inequality, about what you truly value in this “one precious life” in the words of Mary Oliver.

There’s a part of me that wants to speed things up, to move the calendar months to the summer when many more of us will be vaccinated and we can hold each other again, share holidays and laughs in person, dance and sing together, pray together, travel, and of course, roll-out our mats down together again.

And yet…. there’s a part of me that wants to hold on to the introspection, to the cold winter dinners with my twenty-something-year-old children discussing the news of the day and comparing it to other history-making moments, discovering for the first time amusing childhood secrets that we were unaware of as parents, taking turns undoing the dishwasher, watching documentaries (Chernobyl) and Disney movies together (The Lion King for the umpteenth time and new entry to the collection, Soul.)

May we hold close those blessed mysterious moments of light as we move into 2021.

I’ll see you next year on Sunday and Thursday mornings for yoga practice or explore my new NUSHU Group offering with an introduction on January 7, 2021.

With love and gratitude,

Iris