Abundant sunshine warms the skin, lifts the heart. Tinkling ice cream trucks troll the neighborhood. The garden rages its quiet fury. Squeals of delight emerge from backyards. It's summer--full on.
Our conception of summer was formed in childhood, when the season brought day after glorious day of freedom and ease--interrupted only by the early morning torture of a swimming lesson in an unheated pool!
There was little to do and gobs of time to do it. Summer was when we learned to whistle around a long blade of grass; learned to turn a cartwheel; learned how many ripe cherries we could consume without a belly ache. (Well, maybe we had to learn that one again every year.)
Summer was filled to the bursting brim with fun. Camping, berry picking, water skiing. Picnicking. Skim boarding. Softball. But mostly, it was just pleasantly topped off with nothing: lazy days and long, long evenings--when there was no place to go and no time you had to be there. When laying on your back and gazing at the sky constituted a full schedule. Giggling with friends, dissolving yourself in a book--that was enough. Summer was a time when you could simply dig a hole in the sand for no other reason than to watch the sea refill it. Catch bees in a mason jar. Open a lemonade stand and chat with whoever cared to stop. Walk all the way to the corner store just to share a popsicle, licking it with delicious precision, then admire one another's raspberry red tongue.
You could BE. HERE. NOW.
Sometimes we speak of yoga as our "work" and in the sense that it's an exchange of energy, this is true. It has meaning for us, it's important, and that can seem like Serious Business. But in the sense that we do our yoga for its own reward, it more rightfully belongs under the "play" column, doesn't it?
So when we're on our mat, we seek ease. We attempt to lighten the load, drench ourselves in freedom. We aim to make our yoga fun. How do we do that?
First: we drop our expectations. Next: we forget that our yoga has a time slot between this and that. Then: be here now, in our bodies. With our breath. It's as straightforward as that. Just us--and maybe some friends--getting out of the limited territory of our heads and expanding into our whole being.
Finding the way to an endless summer on our mats--even in mid-December.
