What We Choose To Carry

In December, my eldest daughter asked me if I wanted to try an Aerial yoga class with her. I thought it sounded like fun. Having not been in any type of in-person yoga class for at least three years, I was a little nervous. Arriving about 10 minutes early, I was given a tour; the studio was new to me. At the desk the receptionist asked me if I wanted to join the studio for 30 days; they run a fantastic special: “$30 for 30 days” of unlimited classes. I had already paid $22 for the Ariel class, so I thought, “Why not?”. The women in the class were welcoming and friendly to us. Many of the poses were fun, but some hurt my knees. My daughter asked “Are you going to go again?” I responded “I’ve paid for 30 days so I’ll go back and do some yoga- probably “heated”.

Flash forward two weeks…with all the hustle and bustle of the holidays, I hadn’t made it back to the yoga studio.  As my fourteenth day of being a 30 day member approached, I thought, “I need to try more classes”.  Mentioning this to my husband, I explained the “$30 for 30 days” membership. He said, “Sarah, you have been upsold”. Maybe I had been upsold, but I knew that I paid $8 more than the cost of one class, for a month of unlimited yoga.

I signed up for a “warm class” between 80-85 degrees and 75 minutes long. A heated yoga class hadn’t been part of my workout since the late fall of 2019. I had been part of a fantastic heated yoga class, starting in the fall of 2018. Connections were made with a small group of the women who attended “lightly heated yoga”, including Michelle, the instructor. Every week, after class, 4 or 5 us would sit outside the zen studio and talk about our lives. Sometimes we would cry. The group varied in number, as sometime stragglers would stay and chat. Michelle and I were going through similar issues with our children. Her son was older than my child and had just gone to a wilderness therapy program. Mine was suffering from severe suicidal ideation and depression. We would talk for quite a while after class. I considered it my therapy group of sorts. Early in 2019, one of the women (who was a psychiatric nurse), looked at me and said “You need to get your child into treatment; if there is no alcohol or drug use now, there will be.” I will never forget how direct and honest that statement was. Eventually our the little group of women started to go to coffee together. My time with heated yoga, ended in the fall of 2019 when my knee gave out from running. However, I would meet this handful of women, from lightly heated yoga class, for coffee as I did before; this continued until just before the pandemic locked the world down.

Wednesday, I went to heated vinyasa. Positioning myself at the back of the room, I lay down my mat. I was right near the doors where there was cooler air coming in. As the class started, all of us lying on our mats, the teacher started to talk;  we were told: “put down whatever it is you are carrying within yourself”. As her voice went on, I thought “she is reading from a book”.  I opened my eyes, and sure enough she was reading directly from a book.  I couldn’t help comparing her to Michelle, who, even if she read from something, brought so much of herself to class. She shared who she was: cried when tears were close and laughed when she faltered. She allowed us to be present and truly let go of whatever our souls were holding on to.

As today’s heated yoga continued, the cool air coming through the door was sealed by a fabric draft guard across the bottom of the door. The air became stiflingly hot. For a few minutes I thought I was going throw up.  Eventually I was fine. I will go back for the two weeks I have left on my pass. Sadly, I did not get the same spiritual, emotional and physical workout that I did with my old class. Michelle has moved and the class was never reinstated after things shut down due to COVID. Sometimes, when Michelle comes to town, three of us still meet; there is still the bond we formed when we were in so much pain.

At the end of Wednesday’s class, we were once again told to “put down whatever it is you are carrying”….what I was carrying was the memory of my lightly heated yoga class from before 2020, the camaraderie and connection some of us had. I chose not to put it down. We didn’t talk when class was over, but silently rolled our mats and left the studio.