Photo by Joanna
I’m writing this from my in-laws’ farm in South Dakota, on vacation with my husband and son. This morning I went for an early run before it got too hot. I took my iPhone with me so I could listen to music. I also snapped a lot of pictures: birds, horses, clusters of morning glories, a farmyard full of junk cars and boats.
I also took pictures of trees. The South Dakota prairie is pretty flat, with occasional rolling hills, and the trees are few and far between. Most trees grow in clusters by farmhouses, or in rows of tree-breaks that shelter homes from the winter wind. These trees were planted with intention, decades ago. Some have been here for over 100 years, planted with optimism and hope by homesteaders like my husband’s great-grandparents.
I settled into a kind of meditative flow, running, taking pictures, running some more. I’ve run this road many times in the 20+ years I’ve been coming to the farm. But today, my camera helped me be more present to my surroundings, especially the trees.
I noticed how interesting each tree was. There were healthy and full-branched trees, a dead tree that looked like it had been hit by lightning, some smaller ones with gnarly branches. Some trees leaned sharply towards the East, asymmetrically, shaped by the wind. I found myself thinking the words, “Every tree is a piece of art.”
Oh.
Remember my “love/hate” relationship with Tree Pose (see blog post #2)? Well, my morning run-photography-meditation session turned into a reflection on Tree Pose, and on my yoga practice as a whole.
If “every tree is a piece of art”—big and small ones, full-branched and asymmetrical ones, gnarly and lightning-struck ones—could this also be true of yoga practice?
Good art isn’t always classically beautiful. Art also challenges us. It makes us question our assumptions about life, the world around us, ourselves. It makes us laugh sometimes, or cry. Art invites us into deeper connection with the world, with other beings, with ourselves, and with the Sacred.
Yoga does that too.
Today I did a practice on Yogaglo called “Find Your Inner Tree and Grow.” It involved some difficult variations of poses that I’d never done before, including some cool versions of Tree Pose. Some I could do, some I couldn’t. My morning run inspirations helped me be much gentler with myself when my Tree wobbled, when I needed to have my hand on the dresser for balance, or when I could only hold the Tree variation of Vashistasana for a few seconds (while the super-yogis in the video held their Trees through Plank and Chaturanga!).
Every Tree Pose is a work of art. Every practice can be a work of optimism and hope, planted with intention.
From the prairie, Namaste.
