Sally Huggins Toner

First, some news:  My book, Anansi and Friends is up for presale with Finishing Line Press. As I’ve said on other social media outlets, preordering is key with many small presses, so if you are at all interested in how my tribe and I, medical science, and more than a bit of luck and love smacked down the spider goddess, the pink dragon, whatever the F—you want to call her…order today. The link is here.

Commercial over. Time to go with the flow.

A few weeks ago, my husband sent me a link to an article: “Namaste, shitheads: ‘Rage Yoga’ combines beer, cursing, catharsis.”

“Lololololol,” he texted underneath. It’s a joke, right?  The opposite of Namaste.

Then my own yoga instructor cursed in class the next day, and it all made sense.

Let me back up.  According to yoga history, the ancient gurus were extremely tall with uber long, Gumby limbs—the opposite of my 4’10” T-Rex arms.  A friend gave me my first yoga DVD almost 15 years ago, and I laughed in her face until she said—

“Shut up, light a candle, and give it a try.”

Since I began, I’ve defined class names by level of difficulty.

Hatha—the kindest, gentlest—my summer class when I have the days off and can hang out with the Silver Sneaker set. (These classmates routinely kick my ass all over the studio, by the way).

Power—taught by the perky Mommy Boot Camp instructor who tries her damndest to sneak in a little cardio.

Vinyasa—flow…somewhere in between the previous two.

Then my new morning instructor started talking the other week about the concept of yoga flow as it means movement from breath through fire to rest and back again. Which made me look up the definition of the term.

“Seamless placement from one pose to the other.”

I think it was the cursing that finally helped me make the connection after 15 years off-and-on, of shutting up, lighting a candle, and giving it a try.

I began practicing more regularly about a year-and-a-half ago to build muscle and calm after finishing chemo and radiation.  A Good Housekeeping seal of approval from your surgeon and oncologist, as any cancer survivor knows, is far from the end of it.  So, as part of the CBT of post-treatment counseling sessions, I rediscovered yoga.  But I had never heard it put this way—as my instructor got a laugh out of the class after a particularly difficult pose.

“When you says, ‘shit,’” she began

“When your mind says, ‘shit,’” she continued

“When your heart says, ‘shit,’ What do you do?”

Shit—

I’ll have to sit with that for a while.

I thought.

I’ve decided that’s where the placement, the flow, comes in.  The constant movement of Vinyasa also allows us moments of Child’s Pose, or Puppy Pose (similar to Child’s pose with arms stretched further out and a cuter name).

Time in the fire—time to rest and reflect—but movement, flow, all the same.

My birthday was a week ago.  I’ve begun the last year of my 40’s.  I also have several people close to me who are in the middle of the fire right now—facing trials and sadness that can be a death swaddle.  If we live long enough, we can count more than a few people we care about in that category at any given time.  We can also count more than a few people in the middle of rest, or even joy.  (That’s when you get to order a McDonald’s biscuit in the drive-through after class.)

Still, we flow.  We burn, we rest, we rage, cry, and laugh.  Sometimes we do all of these things in the same five minutes.  That’s when Vinyasa becomes power, I suppose.

I must remember to push through the emotional cardio to reap the benefits.

I’m trying.  I’ll be back in class next week…

And the week after that…

And the week after that…

For as long as they’ll have me.