Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray)

threesunflowers I subbed for my regular Sunday morning yoga class today. When I was thinking about what to teach, I came up with the theme of “three.” It just seemed to bubble up as I planned, kept coming up, repeating and insisting itself. I looked up a bit about the meaning of three — divinity, order, unity, wholeness. It’s a sacred number in many religious traditions.

There’s been research that deep breathing triggers a relaxation response in the body. As little as three deep breaths can do the trick. When our lizard, reptilian brain is in a state of fight, flight, or freeze, three deep breaths can instigate a shift back to our natural state of calm, relax us back into our inherent wisdom and compassion.

Yoga can also be translated as “union,” the unification of body, mind, and heart — our three “selves.” Three also made me think of “ready, set, go.” Ready is setting our intention, set is getting together our props and tools, gathering what we need, and go can either be literal movement or energetic, or it can be surrender, as in “ready, set, let go.”

It was a really fun class. We moved through poses in sequences or series of three, paused to take three breaths throughout, and circled back to that notion of unification of body, mind, and heart as we practiced. And the most magic thing that I only realized just now? I had three students.

ringoandpancho

1. Play date with Pancho. These two are such an odd couple, but since they’ve known each other since they were little, they play really well together. It doesn’t hurt that Pancho’s mom is one of my favorite people.

samposthike

2. Sweet Sam. He doesn’t take part in the play date because he doesn’t appreciate the rowdy play, but he’s such a good boy.

3. Tea with good women. One I’d never met before, and the other I’m getting to know better after a long time.

spicytacos

4. Good food. I always share recipes I want to try on my Something Good list, and lately we’ve actually made a couple of them. The above is the Oven Baked Spicy Chicken Tacos, (buried under there somewhere). They were delicious. The Cheesy Zucchini Rice was good too. We’ve also been making gratins with our tomatoes.

5. Eric. Last week when we were texting and sending each other pictures, he said some really sweet things. He’s also been making me laugh this week, even though we’ve been having some hard conversations.

One of the pictures I texted Eric

Bonus joy: clean water, a warm shower, sitting in the backyard with the dogs, grass under my bare feet, seeing an owl on our walk, Wild Writing class, sleeping in, reading, good TV, my new car, yogurt with granola and berries for breakfast, garlic bread, working from home, walking with the dogs, grasshoppers, tiny yellow birds eating the sunflowers, a watermelon from our garden, the weekend, coming home from work and taking off my bra.