The Walk-In Closet

I have a friend, who meditates inside a walk-in closet. God - I just love the image of her walking in there - rolling up her sleeves - getting down to the business of wrestling her demons and all manner of beasts that have taken hold of the microcosm that is her universe. It's perfect. Made for transformation. After all, isn't the walk-in closet where we do most of our changing?

Which reminds me of a yoga-teacher-friend of mine, who once opened class with a story about a mudroom. He grew up in Connecticut, where all his friends had mudrooms. But not him, and he was so envious. When he came home from a day of play, he was greeted at the front door by white, wall-to-wall carpeting. There was just no anxiety-free way of getting his body-all-covered-in-play inside a house-all-covered-in-white without making a mess. Yet that was the expectation put upon him. What a different story it was, when he visited those friends of his with magical mudrooms. Wow! You could just swing open their doors with dirty life all over you and safely cross the threshold. You could be your dirty little self and just hang up your crap, disarming in a self-paced manner. My friend suggested that we make of our yoga class a mudroom. Your yoga practice could be your personal muddy haven, where it's safe to both wear your world - your work, your play, your burdens, your defenses - and also slowly to remove those layers...till there's just you.

I don't have a walk-in closet or a mudroom. But I do have a garage (last metaphor - I swear). It's a work room. A place, where you can take everything apart, turn it upside down and inside out, and get to know it all in so much detail - with curiosity and appreciation for just what is. The getting to know you - your body and your mind - but not in an effort to fix either - lends itself to transformation. The paying attention all by itself - without a judgement that things need to change or to be better - is so liberating. The undressing of all those defenses with a new found comfort and acceptance for just who we are, even dressed in the grime of life, is freedom. Sometimes, we walk away from our meditation or our yoga practice with new clarity, but the true gift comes, when we come to feel grounded with the uncertainty of everything just as it is.