Last week I taught my last class in one of the local studios before it closed. (The building was sold, and as the new owners have different plans for the space, the lease was not renewed.) Some of us had been teaching and practicing in that space for years. In that building we learned, we grew, we were challenged, we let go, we touched in on peace, and we returned home to ourselves many times over.
Just before the building was a yoga studio, it was a video store. When video rentals became obsolete, and that business closed, the walls were painted, new floors installed, signage hung, and just like that it became a yoga studio. (By the way, the studio owner would kill me for making it sound so easy and seamless, but you get the idea.) 😉
Then the really extraordinary part happened, the thing which made that studio the sacred place we knew it to be — people came. Human beings, each on their own unique (though really not all too different) spiritual journeys, for one reason or another walked through the door, sat on the floor together, breathed, spoke, moved and stretched their bodies alongside one another, daring to crack themselves open, look inward, uncover and remember their truest self and their oneness with one another.
That building and many people facilitated this phenomenon, and for it and for all those involved I am deeply grateful. But those four walls do not contain our practice, nor our progress, nor our worship, not even our memories; we house these things within us. They all live in our cells now. We carry these experiences with us wherever we go, whether practicing alone in a funky corner of our garage, or in our car, or on the beach as the waves lap our feet. You, your practice, and your community of fellow yogis are so much bigger and more constant that any physical structure.
As our greatest expression of thanks and collective message of gratitude for the space which we all loved and honored so much, we sat, breathed, moved, and lived as fully, honestly, intentionally, and graciously as ever before. Then we sealed the evening’s practice with the most beautiful, powerful, and moving collective “Om” whose vibration resonated through our beings, through the room, beyond the walls, and out into infinity.
“We’re all just walking each other home.” — Ram Dass
Thank you to the space and all who made practicing together there possible. Thank you for sharing in this small but significant leg of the journey. Onward!
Krystal Barschig 