#365yoga: Day 36 Hush Hush…Ninja Time

How ironic that almost exactly one month ago I was getting in trouble for talking at Kripalu and feeling sort of annoyed by the requirement of silence!  Today, oh boy… what I would’ve given for a silent breakfast!!  The times they are a changing, Maynard!

People often ask me why I started doing yoga and I tell them it was because I wanted space and quiet.  I love that tiny rectangle zone of my mat that is only mine where I can stretch and breathe. No crawls on me or asks anything from me except to breathe and feel.  My phone gets turned off for an hour at least and I can be as quiet as I want to be.  This probably sounds so trivial to most folks, but for me it is paradise.  Sure, I love the ta-da poses and the way my body feels afterwards, but honestly I came to yoga because I wanted something that was only mine.

As a mom with smallish elves I feel like I share everything: my things, my car, my food and mostly my space.  My wonderful and precocious elves have inherited the gift of gab from me and literally talk 24/7.  They love to do things with me, which is wonderful, but they rarely give me any moments alone. Yoga gives me a time and place to claim this quiet.  Like the polar bear I sorta am, I crave solitude to hear the cracking ice and my own thoughts.  Without daily silence, I begin to hear those cracks, except they are in my sanity.

Today was a day filled with infinite amounts of noise.. the din of kids and their electronic items was overwhelming.  I sounded like the Grinch in Dr. Seuss’ book who said “Noise, Noise, Noise, Noise!  If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s noise!!”  Truth be told I felt like the Grinch too because after weeks of virtual imprisonment with the elves at home solo I didn’t want anything to do with anything fun they were doing.  I screamed at one point:  “I just need ten minutes of silence!  Nobody talk!”  Yikes, I didn’t like myself at all today! Eventually I calmed down (thanks to the imposed quiet) and told my elves I had to go outside,  shovel snow for 15 minutes and they HAD to not fight so I could do it.  No shoveling meant no path for the propane guy and possibly no heat in the house.  They got it and let me go, giving me the biggest gift ever!  I went out in the pouring rain, shoveled an immense amount of heavy snow and just listened to only the sounds of icicles falling from the trees.  Renewed and soaking wet I went back to being a nice mom and perhaps a yogi again.

After drying off I helped my eldest elf create an origami Ninja star that he had mostly made (from watching You Tube videos of how to do it) while I was shoveling.  The imposed space I had created had given them a gift too:  they were doing their own things quietly and happily.  No one was fighting, no one was yelling and everyone was creating.  Peace, quiet and happiness:  what a concept!  We ended the day giggling and throwing ninja stars around the house waiting for their dad to get home from grant writing.  I downloaded a meditation time ap for my iPhone and as soon as I finish this post I’m going to sit quietly on my own time for a few.

Everyone comes to yoga for their own reasons.  Mine is ninja-like:  stealth, movement and quiet.  The edges of my day were as sharp as that star, but after some Hush, Hush… ninja time they were as smooth as butter.  While I wasn’t always yogic or a perfect mother today, I remembered something about myself again and that’s just as much yoga as doing asanas on my mat.