Remembering and Forgetting

Last week I forgot about my 6pm yoga class. Just like that. In the almost 15 years that I’ve been teaching I have never ever forgotten about a class. Yet at 6:15pm there I was sitting at my kitchen table, in seemingly luxurious spaciousness, creative writing and eating leftover coconut rice, my contact lens already removed and sitting on my laptop, clothes off, my body happily stretched across two kitchen chairs, when the text came in.

Are you teaching tonight or did you get a sub? There is no teacher in the studio.

Motherfucker.

I threw some clothes on, grabbed my keys, ran out of the house and into my car and sped down the road.

Don’t worry, it happens, it’s not kidney surgery, they’ll be fine, drive safe.

I didn’t. I cursed the cars going the speed limit and swore at the sidewalk that should have been my passing lane. I got there in thirteen minutes, still more than thirty late. But there they were waiting for me, ten students milling about, laughing, having easy conversations.

“Are you ok? An accident?” Their faces concerned.

My hand moved to my heart, my chest softened, my exhale almost became a sob. But I taught the class, talked about sensitivity, intimacy with ourselves, learning to be kind again and again, even though they were the ones teaching me. I hugged each one of them on the way out.

An hour before that, I wanted the world to swallow me up on the drive over. I was embarrassed and felt like a fool, I was overwhelmed and shamed myself. But I made it there, and the world went on with her graceful patience and arms open wide generosity.

This is why I love doing what I do: being a teacher processing dissonance and difficulty in front of people who want to hear it, who want to do good, who want to be sensitive and loving and peaceful and kind, who want to see shifts in themselves, their families, their communities, our country, this planet. Thank you Universe, what a blessing.

Here’s what I’m learning:

• Quit the self-brutality and forgive myself as quickly and easily as I would someone who didn’t commit a major crime.

• Nothing is ever an excuse to shame myself. Nothing.

• Keep using my own personal experience as fodder for kindness and understanding of someone else’s pain.

• We are all cut from the same cloth; one giant patchwork quilt interwoven with personalities and pain, aches, anguish and ecstasies, love and fear, trauma and hope. All I want to do is feel it, be a part of it, and remember my humanness so I can be a better one every single day.