A practice. What is a practice. A practice, I am learning from yoga, is something you do regularly, that changes, and your relationship to it changes, and you keep doing it, whether or not you feel the same way about it today as you felt yesterday. Like any relationship, the feelings are strong and fleeting. If you used the feelings as the only compass you would be quickly lost. How can it be that you fall so hard in love with a person, certain that this person is the one you were meant to be with, the one made for you, and then one day later, or fourteen years later, it’s gone in a wink, all those feelings, and in its place, as with J and L, is fear, and dread, and rage? I fall in love with yoga, I realize that doing it makes me feel centered, keeps me reverent and alert. I sign up for a year of it, thinking, yes, this is my practice. Suddenly it looks kind of raggy around the edges. Is this really what I want? Is this really worth doing every day? It’s so dull. It takes so much time. And who the hell is this weird guy, talking to me about breathing, and holding my shoulder blades back and down?

So practice. Practice is riding that out, until the next feeling arrives, and blooms, and passes, and the next. Sometimes the feelings will be tempting and intoxicating, places you want to stay a long time, this feeling of being strong, or peaceful, but those feelings pass, and then you are bored, or nauseated, or tired, or irritated. You think, why did I make a commitment to this? Look at all these people. Why in the world are they here?