Namaste

It's International Yoga Day! Also the Solstice, wherein we celebrate the longest stretch of daylight all year, so--suprisesurprise--I took a beautiful yoga class at my home studio, I pulled weeds in my sweet friends' vineyard, sipped homebrew on their porch overlooking a day's work, and then invited some fam over for an impromptu swim / sausage-and-garlic-scape-(a.k.a. grilled garter snake)-bbq / lightsaber-duel (cousins!kids!) ~ I just wanna give a heartfelt shoutout to all of my [yoga] teachers, especially mi prima, Larita, whose passion brought me to the mat from the start and inspired in me the pull to keep showing up.

Breath::Motion::Peace

To me, yoga is everything the same way music is everything--it is accessed in pulling vineyard weeds while cursing at the most stubborn roots and returning the chickadees' mating volley; in answering sixty-seven questions a minute from a seven-year-old who wants her pond-soaked butt on your lap and in whose wild eyes and sunny freckles you see your entire past; in walking to the grill with a stack of plates in the crook of one arm and her hand in your other hand; in the way you don't just say 'fuckit' and call someone you know you cannot but breathe and change the radio station instead; in squeezing a wedge of lemon into your morning cup and in using the last of your freezer vodka to mix drinks for a houseful of road-weary lunatics at 2am; in vacuuming the ceiling cracks with an extension before strangers arrive; in assuring your best friend who just bought a house that you will be there after the closing to scrub the cupboards before her dead father's favorite pint glass finds its home there; in watching, with beaming admiration, your husband in his grout-caked work pants put on dorky ear protection and hop on the John Deer and mow for hours with his bad posture; in each dip, swallow, and melting exhale; in every slow swooping note and in the sticky staccato ones too; in your hand to your heart when there are a million questions and in your hand to your heart when you are the void with not a thing to ask; in the meander and the punchline and the thesis and the epilogue; in the journey between disregard and supreme care...

Vira. Viraviravira. Warrior. Baby. Old, old lady. Thanks to this practice for letting me in.

Thanks to the sun for shining so long.

Thanks to you for reading and for reciprocating. 

"The light within me honors the light within you ~ Namaste."