The tracks have been rattling, in the last few years we have all experienced profound change and, perhaps, a renewed sense of possibility. May 2022, I packed my car and quietly paused my practice. I crossed the country to participate in a 3-month Karma Yoga program in the mountains of British Columbia. In mid-September I bought a one way ticket to Europe that wound it's way to Guatemala.
Traveling is an exhilarating disassembling of parts, of appearances and disappearances, of lost and found, chaos and rest, foods, currencies, tongues, bit lips and missed trains, and ultimately of movement ~ change. We know there are lots of ways of moving - writing is movement, sitting still is a going in a staying, thoughts have wings. Movement reminds of impermanence, of knowing and not-knowing, of the many and the one, of the conceivable and the inconceivable, the hidden and the seen, the taking apart and the starting again.
I enjoy the space of not-knowing, there is truth in deferring to the mystery. And there is a subtle distinction in choosing to trust the mystery and hoping that good behavior aligns with someone or something else who will answer the questions. Maybe it's the difference between going out to sea with a rudder, a sail, and two oars or simply pushing a raft out into the waves.
How do we trust and accept that we secretly want things to unfold in a particular way? That there's something we can do about it, and, well, all I can do is wait and see. There's work to be done and nothing I can do. Where’s the connection that nourishes the trust? Or captivates the senses? The connection has long been for me in practice ~ in meditation, yoga, writing, with our time in the studio, the bloom.
In truth, it has been a gradual path: 9 years of yoga at our beloved Studio 72, 8 years guiding Cranio sessions, 4 plays, countless drawings, thousands of hours of our conversations. In our complex world, rich with opportunity and paradox, it isn’t easy to know what it is we want or how to shape what is we have, talents and limitations alike. My hope is that we continue to create places of access, entrances to beauty and mystery, with a deep reverence for living. Writing this letter and you reading it is one of those places of access. We might call it healing. And we might call it, as my dear colleague and mentor Johanna Franzel reveals, permission. All of this and without knowing where or how the raft is going, we continue to see what's here and listen for what's possible.
Yours in play,
with Love,
Molly