What’s In a Name?

Dear reader,

Thank you for indulging me over these past many weeks as my posts have veered so far from “yoga” that one reader (looking at you, Dad) jokingly suggested that I might need a new blog title.

It is certainly true that lately, every time I sit down to write, it isn’t exactly “yoga” (but happily it isn’t “disenchantment” either) that comes out. During this COVID-y time especially, I am trying to write from as sincere a place as I can, and right now that place just does not have much to do with how best to teach downward facing dog.

I wish I could tell you that my yoga practice has been anchoring me during this crazy time, that it has been a refuge I visit daily to keep me centered. But that would be a lie. The truth is, I haven’t been nearly focused or disciplined enough for that. And yet somehow, I actually feel quite close to my yoga right now. Closer in fact than I have for some time.

When I first fell in love with yoga two decades ago, I remember feeling like everything in my life was in fact yoga. Dancing, laughing, crying, walking, dating, school-ing, friend-ing, daughter-ing –all of it– felt very connected to what I was experiencing on the yoga mat. It was intense but also wonderful. And honestly, I miss it. It was a honeymoon phase for sure, but it was also very real, deep, and beautiful.

One of the things I needed back then, and that yoga provided, was perspective. It gave me a different lens through which to look at my life, and that lens was all about connection. Even the word yoga translates literally from Sanskrit as union and shares the same root as the word yoke. Yoga really is all about connection even on the most basic level of its name.

Back in those early days, yoga helped me recognize the fundamental inter-connectedness of things. It gave me a language through which to start looking at the wholeness of my life and not just its disparate (and sometimes incompatible) parts. Certainly yoga is not the only vehicle for doing this, but it is what I stumbled upon when I really needed it, and I am thankful that I did.

Yoga still does these things for me, but in a quieter way. And I am happy to report that there are more things in my life that also do this than there were when I was a spry young gal of twenty. And wanna know what one of those things is? This blog! It helps me feel connected. Connected to my yoga, to my teaching, and to you, dear reader. So even if I’m not writing about down dogs and warriors and yoga sutras, this whole Yoga for the Disenchanted thing is still for me yoga.

And even though I haven’t been practicing nearly as much or as often as I should, my daily life has felt more centered and connected during this sheltering-in period than it has in quite some time. That isn’t to say that I am not scared and sad and grieving, because I am all of those things. But one thing this awful virus has done in spades is show us that we are all keenly and vitally connected, for better and for worse, and that has made me approach my days in a very different way.

In that spirit I am going to take the annoyingly broad view that even my posts that are not directly about yoga are still in fact yoga. And even if I am not doing as much yoga as I should, I am still engaged in yoga.

So, Dad, all this is to say, I ain’t changing the name of the blog!

Also, Dad, you know I’m just yanking your chain, right? I know you weren’t being serious…

Also, Dad, I REALLY can’t wait to hug the living crap out of you when all of this is over. Thank you for being my biggest fan.