Now the discipline of yoga begins.

From my new column at ExhaleAsheville.

Saturday Stillness.
by Kimberly Drye

A quiet Saturday morning. Shhhhh

It’s raining and Saturday. For the first time in a while, I wake up alone. This quiet house is mine. I’m finished with college. The holidays are over. My boyfriend is out of town. I light a candle and play Radiohead on Spotify. Lying in bed, I snuggle with my husky as the rain falls gently, steadily, outside my window. I pick up the book that’s been on my nightside table for months, waiting for the moment: this day. While not a book of particular grandeur, just a book I’ve been wanting to read in my free time, it is significant in this-- my alone time.

Sacred and cherished; however, after just a few short moments, the quiet in my house feels heavy. The list of things to do before I leave for vacation next week begins to tally. The silence of my cell phone suddenly makes me afraid that I’m not loved.

I check facebook. I check Instagram. I feel better for a moment. Then I realize, this is a problem-- my problem, and a societal problem.

I’m afraid to be alone, to sit still. Even now, after years of teaching and practicing yoga. Nothing about the feeling is rational. I’m afraid I won’t matter; that I don’t matter.

One person I know once quipped, “You have more friends than Mickey Mouse.” I love my friends. I think the relationships I have with other people are what offer the most richness to experiences in my life, yet I remember a remark by one of my teachers, Aadil Palkhivala: “Every relationship you have with another person can only be as deep and meaningful as the relationship you have with yourself.”

I neglect this relationship with myself, because the truth is that studying myself is scary. Getting to know myself is scary because along with what I hope I am is the fear of what I might not be. In these moments alone, caught inside away from the rain, I get to see who I am when set apart. There’s no one to pull me out of the shadows, no one but me. When I’m alone, I realize it’s up to me to make that choice, not anyone else. I need to reach out and grab the light with both hands. I have to choose to begin the discipline of yoga, I must chose to come into the now. And in the now-- there is no fear, there is no weight. There’s only the sun seeping in under the curtains as the rain begins to clear.

The first yoga sutra of Patanjali: “Now the discipline of yoga begins.” The inspiration for my classes last week, but also a reminder that I must choose to begin, and then make that choice over and over again.

In today’s world, we often think of discipline as trying to do as much as possible in as little time as possible. But, as my teacher (and owner of One Center in Asheville) Cindy Dollar says-- in yoga, this discipline “is about subtraction rather than addition”.