By Katherine Whitfield Baker
About eight weeks ago, I found my way back to yoga after an eight year hiatus.
Specifically, I found my way back to the same Tuesday evening class I once
regularly attended at Evergreen Yoga Center, still held weekly from 6-7 p.m.,
still taught by EYC founder Leah Bray Nichols.
And, walking in that first April evening I saw Gerri, faithful classmate from my former days,
still set up in the far right corner by the rope wall.
After eight years, it was soothing to note how little had changed.
Still stacked on the floor, the pile of thick, brightly patterned blankets,
fringed, smartly folded and smelling faintly of hay.
Still at rest on the shelf, a cache of cork, wood and foam blocks—sturdy sentinels standing guard
over an array of quietly nesting bolsters.
Still cool and sturdy under my feet, the hardwood floor.
And, on the wall between two bathrooms,
still the sign that reads,
“If you find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.”
Standing barefoot at the sink that first night back, memories surface of a younger me
leaning over this same sink, inhabiting this same space
in a different time.
For a moment, I catch a glimpse of this self in the full-length mirror—lithe frame, smooth skin,
frantic pace, disjointed spirit.
Week after week, this self stood before the mirror after class,
hastily changing clothes, applying fresh makeup, reviving her hair and racing forth
from savasana to have dinner with a love interest who was,
in fact, neither interested nor loving.
Patting my hands dry,
I pat my heart, too,
and blow a gentle kiss across the years
to that me in the mirror who once pursued flexibility only to bend to another’s ideal.
After eight years, it was soothing to note how much had changed.
The body reflecting back at me now is heavier, softer.
Wild white streaks accentuate my hair.
I rarely wear makeup, and when I do, it isn’t to a yoga class.
Eight years ago, I held extended warrior poses while thinking about
the most expedient route I might take on my hurried crosstown drive to dinner.
Now when I hold the warrior poses,
I think about my knees.
Thomas Wolfe tells us that you can’t go home again,
and it’s taken me most of my life to understand that it’s not home that changes—it’s you.
You can’t go home again;
you are not the same person you were when last you lived there.
I am not the same person I was when last I lived in Leah’s Tuesday evening yoga class,
on this studio’s cool wooden floor,
in front of its bathroom sink and full-length mirror.
Returning to a space so perfectly preserved in time,
I am granted the rare, illuminating opportunity to examine shadows of my former self
in contrast to my present mind,
observing echoes of the me who once resided here
while embracing my older, more fully-realized being.
And, of course, many aspects of my shadow self remain.
Inversions still terrify.
Punctuality still plagues.
The interrupting cow still moos with abandon.
But the heart also beats with greater compassion—not just for others, but for the one it sustains.
The chest’s steady rise and fall allows all else to fall away.
And the mind, now, empties at will,
holding on only to the thought that it feels good
to be home.