My yoga instructor said something that brought tears to my eyes. Four days earlier I had attended a new class with an unfamiliar instructor, and I ended up so vertiginous that I couldn’t drive home. (Read the Head and Heart versions of the story.) Now I was back on my mat in my usual class, hoping against hope that this practice would not also end in disaster. And then, her words:
Your yoga practice today is not the practice that you had yesterday, and it is not the practice you will have tomorrow.
I heard these words and felt them to my core. My teacher didn’t know about the difficult practice I’d had the week before, and I marveled at how sometimes, someone says exactly the thing you need to hear.
Yesterday, you may have been able to move deeply into a pose that, today, is beyond your reach. Tomorrow, your experience will be different yet again.
Yes, I thought. I had been angry and intensely discouraged that I couldn’t complete last week’s class. By the end of the hour I hadn’t been able to move without feeling sick. Tears moistened my eyes as I remembered the emotional pain I’d felt. Then I closed my eyes and joined in a sustained OM with the rest of my classmates. Today’s class would be different, I could feel it.
