Wild Yoga Love

The kettle whispers on the stove, I don’t put the whistle down because I like to keep the water hot for pouring over my stovetop espresso to make Americanos in the morning. It’s the easiest way to keep hot water around when one does not have a standard drip coffee maker. That whisper makes me think of yoga, the gentle seeping of yoga into my life, subtly reminding me to head to the mat before my days begins, Except that right now, I do not need gentle reminder, I need a sharp piercing whistle to send me running from the shower or closet to snatch the screaming kettle off the stove and hurl me onto my mat. I need a steamy, reckless love affair with yoga. I need to be swept off on a weeklong rendezvous with a sweaty pulsing vinyasa get away. 

I spent the last year in an amazing Teacher Train course at Tejas Yoga in Chicago’s bustling South Loop. It was an amazing year; steeped in the teachings of Hatha yoga under two of the most inspiring teachers I have meet, James Tennant and Jim Bennitt. Trust me, if you find yourself in Chicago take the time to go visit their studio! The thing I love most about my teachers is how subtly they integrate yoga into your life. You never once feel like you are being told how to do or feel about yoga; “My intention is not to make you feel the way I do about yoga. My intention is to be a support system for you to discover what yoga means to you” James Tennant says.  But his enthusiasms is infectious and even without meaning to simple things like making coffee and washing your face in the morning seem to take on a yogic style. So the past year has been just that for me, feeling, accepting, and noticing yoga in everything I do. Marveling at the subtleties and smiling as I engage mulabandha while push my lawn mower up an incline. It’s a gift you can’t really describe and I am grateful for the experience but now I need something different.

I need a Shiva Rea, a yogi who practically burst with joy and love when she teaches vinyasa flow. Like Shiva Rea I need to sway my hips over the mat, let my arms dance wide expanding my heart, I need to feel my heart beat along with beats dropped my MC Yogi and DJ Drez. I need to dance in my yoga out on the grass under the summer sun and sweat out all linger winter introspection. In my head I hear the words of poets like Rumi and Rilke who dove so deep into the love of God and Nature that words tumble out of them soaked in awe. I need to whirl like a dervish inside and let my limbs move through asanas like wind just before a summer storm. And the best part of this longing for wild love type yoga? It’s out there! Yoga is there to fit into any size need you have. It’s out here to envelope you in whatever kind of shape you are in. and it is out there to shimmy up beside you and dance like no one is watching!