Received via email - 1/27/10
Dear Kate,
I was delighted when our class received an invitation to send you a letter about how Yoga is changing our lives.
An invitation by definition is a spoken or written request for someone's presence or participation. I accept!
About three months ago, I was driving around Pleasanton as I so often do, and felt a familiar nudge to glance down Division Street at the sign on your building. For years I have told myself. One day I will have to try Yoga. Everytime I passed by the dancing sign, that warm red brick stacked building and potted plants,a twinge of curiosity would bubble up. This particular day three months ago, maybe that twinge was more like a pang of hunger, maybe I was ready for change, or maybe I heard your compassionate voice emanating it's halo. Whatever it was, I drove home, Googled your website and read all about Downtown Yoga. I left a message, my stomach fluttering, but I wanted to know more. Kate, you called me back. You put me at ease, answered my questions, and invited me into your world,. I signed up for the intro class.
During that first class, I knew you could teach me Yoga. Your sense of humor matched with your precise instruction was exceptional. Your knowledge of how to avoid injury and your gift of permission for each person to listen to their body and honor their limitations while striving to go beyond them slowly and carefully convinced me I had the right teacher. I knew then and there that I had embarked on a new path that would start inside a brick building on a Street named Division. I knew there was no going back to my life before Yoga. The metamorphosis had already begun. Separating me into parts so I might ultimately find my wholeness.
By the end of that first session, as we were resting on our mats spiritually elated and physically exhausted,I still was listening to you. I was following your resonance, pausing at the silence between your words and each breath. I was trusting by body, my breath, your guidance. I felt connected to the others lying next to me in the room. You asked us to extend our breath, and as I did and followed it to my hands, it felt like spheres of energy were spinning in my palms. I was no longer in the choke-hold of my thoughts. My body was relaxed but alert, and I felt connected to something infinite, ancient, and dazzling.
If only.... I would attend a Yoga class every day. I am open to that idea if the Universe can find a way to arrange it for me. ha ha. In the meantime I wake up every morning and stretch into mountain pose. I stop sometime during the day and notice my breath. I have sat and pondered the magnitude of a moment , instead of allowing every event of the day to swallow me up. I yearn to be more mindful of what I do, how I sit, what I say and how I relate to others. Instead of giving into every frustration or judgment, I find myself sending love to people from my heart center, who before, I might have put up a wall to keep them out.
I have been inside Downtown Yoga's four brick walls now, I know there must be a metaphor in there somewhere--- Practicing Yoga in a edifice constructed of brick one of the most inflexible materials. Maybe the metaphor is that beyond the walls we construct in ourselves too, there is poise and grace, teacher and student, movement and hard work that leads to deep and profound meditation, understanding: soulfulness, spirit, trust and truth, and orchids that bloom in clusters in the dead of winter. There is no going back for me.
Namaste!
Joanie Sanches
Yoga toddler in your Tuesday night beginner class.