Below is the new years letter I sent out to my students, yoga friends and teachers.
All,
I wanted to take a moment to reach out to my yoga community and to thank each of you for your energy over the course of this past year. I always look forward to this week. Whatever it is that we’re celebrating this season, from the birth of a savior to the rededication of the Temple to “lo, Saturnalia” to lengthening days and shortening nights to finally getting a few days off work to go ski, it feels like a big annual exhale to me.
In addition to our annual pledge to eat better, exercise more and quit smoking/coffee/whatever, this is a natural time to reflect on our lives past and future. We make plans, reminisce and organize. Our minds stretch forward and back, integrating all the chaos of the year into a personal history that we’ll bore our grandkids with. I just wanted to remind you that sandwiched in between all this past and future there’s a fragile little thing called Present. The whole universe lives there. We tend not to like it because it’s not as pliable as past or future. Past, we can filter, alter details in our mind, forget pieces entirely. Future is even more malleable. We can change it wholesale. Watch this: image you won the lottery. Boom. Totally changed, and you can change it dozens of other ways with just a thought. Now Present, we can’t really change in this way. It’s here, and it’s what it is. All we can do is control how wide we open the shutters to let it in. In the middle of holiday shopping in Union Square with thousands of people swarming around us, we might close the shutters down to a crack, just looking at the next block and keeping the gift list in the forefront of our minds. In yoga class, we try to open them as wide as they’ll go, feeling and experiencing as much as possible in each moment. It’s like giving shivering little Present a big, warm hug.
So, as the family and friends come and go, as we hurtle headlong into New Year’s Celebrations and then prepare to return to our daily routines, take a minute to appreciate Present, the present you have given yourself through the efforts of your thoughts and deeds. Try it right now…straighten your spine, take a nice deep breath and take off all the filters for a couple of seconds. Let all the sensations in. Smile down at Present, the quieter, underappreciated child. Just like that, you’ve done a yoga practice, without a single downward dog.
Namaste.
Kevin
