I can stand staunchly

I have taken the leap, and have started doing hot yoga once a week.  Hot yoga is a series of poses done in a room heated to 105 degrees.  A lot of emphasis is placed on breathing and balance.    Although I have done hot yoga before, today is my first day of making it a solid part of my life. 

These are two different pieces about hot yoga from my journal:

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I get to the class early to acclimate to the heat.  As everyone arrives I watch as they find their special places.  One gentleman touches several nail clusters on the floor with his feet until he locates his spot.  Then he carefully lines up his mat along the nails.

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When I sweat I feel like I add layers to myself, to the home that is me.  My worldly possessions live within my cells.  I am a place, and the place is alive, and it holds all of me.  Sweating adds strength to a home that I don’t always acknowledge.  While I live on a quaint but unremarkable street in a little city in Kansas, it is not my true home.  It houses me, sure, but it does not contain me.  My body is my true house, the structure that holds and orchestrates my pulse. Because my home is my body I am not strewn about in different places, living outside myself in a pseudo hearth.  Also, if I allow my true home to be a physical landmark I will be perpetually exposed, my strength pocked with the foul weather of people’s unhappiness. Because my body is my home, I have constant shelter, and each time I sweat I am building a stronger place to hold me, so that whenever an intrusion occurs – a dirty look, obtrusive noises, the wild winds of indifference, I can stand staunchly and sustain minimal damage.

This is why hot yoga has become a constant.  I am guaranteed a little bit of sweat.  Not to mention a stillness inspired by motion.