First Yoga Lesson in Here and now

First Yoga Lesson

“Be a lotus in the pond,” she said, “opening slowly, no single energy tugging

against another but peacefully, all together.” I couldn’t even touch my toes.

“Feel your quadriceps stretching?” she asked. Well, something was certainly

stretching. Standing impressively upright, she raised one leg and placed it

against the other, then lifted her arms and shook her hands like leaves. “Be

a tree,” she said.

I lay on the floor, exhausted. But to be a lotus in the pond opening slowly,

and very slowly rising— that I could do.”

Mary Oliver, Blue Horses: Poems