A Space for Yoga

Why Yoga?

It happened in the early and frigid morning hours of December. I’d often drive to the gym before the sun even peaked over the horizon. The quiet hush that blanketed my neighborhood at that hour was my meditation. The stillness and crackling silence had sustained me for years.

But on that morning, I was tired, and the streets were slick and the wind whipped. My breath billowed out in gigantic swirling waves. I pulled my sweatshirt closer and shivered. It was too cold to make it to the gym.

Sighing, I opened the DVD cabinet and scanned my exercise collection. Shoved in the back, was a beginning yoga DVD that I had purchased over a year ago. Why not try it?  A puff of dust slid off the case as I ripped off the plastic cover. I grabbed a towel and pushed play. 

The teacher instructed me to stand in Tadasana. Breathe in peace, breathe out calm.  As I closed my eyes and imagined the radiant expanse forming in my chest, I felt a shift. I breathed more deeply and stretched my arms even further apart. A peace that I had never before known took hold.

And in that moment, I understood to the depths of my being that I deserved to take up space in the world.

It was a shift of epic proportions for a girl who lived her life in smallness and fear. But now, I was standing and breathing and living in expansive radiance.