monkey mind

Choose to Stay Here, Or…

I needed my morning yoga more than my a.m. caffeine. I rolled out the mat in the dark with my first real, deep breath. ‘Just stay in yoga.’ I told myself. I didn’t want to be lax about the monkey mind today. There was too much to think about, and I just wanted to breathe and move and not think about it.

I was feeling it, by the way. That buzz, the deep breaths. The humming, moving, oneness of everything. But then my mind wandered, and I know it did only because I came back. In guiding a variation, the voice coming out of my laptop said, ‘Stay here, or…’

BAM. Yes, a pose variation. Stay in revolved crescent lunge, or open your arms and fly.* That’s what she said. But I heard, stay here. Stay on your mat. Stay with the breath. Stay in the moment. Stay here.

And as the morning goes on, I hear a different message. When I’m feeling stressed or negative or hopeless or frustrated or worried, I can choose to stay there, or I can choose something different. The point is, I can choose. Choose to stay here, or open your arms and fly.

*This happens to be one of my favorite sequences. A variation on Sun B, flow to crescent lunge (say the right leg is bent), backbend, hands to heart center, then twist, hooking your left elbow over your opposite knee. Stay here, or open your arms like wings and fly (left palm on the mat next to the foot, right arm reaching to the sky), look up, then transition, come up into warrior ii. Breathe. Mmm. Delicious.