The sun is shining bright this morning and I just did some sun salutations in the corner of my office. It's sparkling and glittering like Springtime. When I long for the Spring on these long, dark days before Winter Solstice, it's nice to find small moments of brightness and revelation on the mat. It feels good just to breathe and move and stretch out all the anxiety and bad dreams from the night before. I am not a morning person, so there is no gracefulness to a morning practice. It's rather bearlike; all paws. I wake up resistant, angry, resentful that I have to keep on. But... for some reason lately, I'm driven to climb onto the floor every morning and lift into a devotional down dog, even when my brain believes it to be a terrible, terrible idea.
I've committed to show up on my yoga mat everyday now, a daily practice, even if it's only 30 minutes or... 3 minutes... even on the days when I rush around, working 12 hours, and can't even manage to wash my dishes or my hair. A commitment to my practice is a commitment to myself. I'm at the point now that if I don't do yoga, for even a day, I feel off balance and agitated. A healthy addiction maybe?
I recently pulled the Nine of Pentacles card in a reading. I call this card the yoga practice card because it shows the figure standing in beautiful, full garden alone. It represents all the discipline of a practice. The garden brings the figure many riches in the future and yet, because of her fierce discipline, she stands in the present, alone, lonely and sometimes dissatisfied. In some decks there are animal friends depicted with her, usually a hooded falcon, still only representing an intense training regime, instead of a relationship. The lesson of this card is what follows. The following card, the Ten of Pentacles, shows a couple surrounded by a harvest and riches, suggesting that practice needs to happen to sustain a relationship and enjoy a bountiful harvest.
