Losing the Yoga Studio and Moving: The Effects on My Practice and Yours
"In the view of infinity any defined long-term is short-term"
The morning sun in the gym at Keep Colony is as comforting to me as the embrace of friend or lover
I left Virginia for Texas just as the season began to change from summer to fall. I entered into the climate of Texas, stimulated and positively energized by the heat. After two months of training at Black Swan Yoga and basking in a prolonged summer I came back ready to, yet again, extend my services to the community through Crossfit and yoga.
I typically start any new venture with a plan, ready to modify as needed but with the assumption that I know the general direction in which my life is to trend. It was not long after my return to Virgina that I realized that all bets were off, my plans were very short-sighted and I was in for a long, cold winter.
Here I am, in the gym again and ready to start demo down in the yoga-studio-to-be. Zero articles of clothing pictured here remained unscathed by paint, tears and utter desecration through three months of demolition and construction.
What went so far astray from the course I had laid out for myself and my studio? The list is long but ultimately unimportant. The one and only constant that I had ever needed to consider was the constant need for tireless labor. And that is an ultimate life's lesson learned anew. What good is a daily yogic meditation and the strength derived from Crossfit and the patience learned from perseverance if, when faced by adversity, a person does not maintain the presence of mind to know all work is a thing of vanity that will one day pass? That is not a statement meant to be negative. It is an ego-check of the utmost sincerity and one that a doer must face time and again. Even when a job is done it is both done and not-done. Even when a person thinks the fruits of his or her labor is his or her own to cherish, external forces may exert themselves and destroy the very foundation of the work that was done.
"In the view of infinity any defined long-term is short-term."
- Frank Herbert
God Emperor of Dune
An idea or undertaking that is born of love will maintain beyond its physical limits if it is truly rooted in the divine effort to bring humans closer to one another, nature and God. What is a yoga studio or a life-time of teaching compared to infinite-being and an unfettered capacity to love? If undertaken with humility and the assumption that there are no "brownie points" for hard work, perhaps one may hope that this small best-effort is enough.