Specks and planks

I walked in to see purple mats splayed haphazardly around the room in a sort of organized chaos. As I claimed a spot for my own purple mat I watched as a short yet unsurprisingly lean older women danced about the front of the room. Her dark sandy blonde curls bobbed with each little excited jump and her smile stretched across her relaxed face. The class started when she clapped her hands and stopped her jumping. In seconds she was immersed in a speech on the importance of breathing, connecting with your inner self and other crazy left-over hippy nonsense. This afternoon, during our first yoga class, I couldn’t hold it together. The giggles and laughter escaped me while she was throwing out the best “that’s what she said” lines along with her wonderful hippy nonsense. Surprisingly the laughter was more relaxing then the actual class, despite the long minutes we focused on our breathing. The moment however that should have brought me out of my laughing fit was when she was talking about emotions. She had settled on anger. Recently I have felt myself be rather immune to anger, so yesterday when I felt it for the first time since the night of my Portuguese proposal I was scared. Afraid that I couldn’t handle life anymore and was brought back to the moment where a not so typical crazy hippy was teaching profound life lessons.

Amira strikes the mat to the right of where she is sitting and begins talking to herself, as she is gathering her thoughts, she gets a funny look on her face as if she is regretting starting this conversation, but she plows ahead regardless. She is making a point on dealing with your emotions and who you are, head on. You can’t escape from them or run out on them. She strikes the mat with the palm of her hand and resumes her conversation with herself.

“come sit here angry Amira. Angry Amira, what makes you angry? Is it the fact that your father is angry? That your father mistreats you with that anger? Or is it because you are angry at yourself for treating others with that same anger? Angry Amira what makes you angry?”

At this point I’m in the throws of disguising my current fit of laughter. I didn’t know if it was from her body language or from the animated way she approached life. Either way I missed the point she was making until it slapped me in the face last night. You can’t be angry at others for the way they treat you. It only leads to the creation of a double standard for yourself. You can’t No Faz Mal it away either. You have to approach it, albeit respectfully head-on. Tear it down from the inside before you can chip away from the outside. I know Amira’s yoga planks aren’t the same as the one’s Christ had to talk about, but they both have a lot to say about dealing with the specks in your own eye.