The women thank me for the laughter.
The interpreter, my co-instructor who exhibited innate yoga-teaching skill as she expertly added cues to sit straight and tall, and animated her hands to mimic the fall and rise of the breath, she rewraps the essence of the Afghan woman’s compliment into English.
This offering of thanks takes a breath or two to sink in.
I drop my teaching expectations to create space for what is real, what has been expressed, the energy present in the bustling community room at the back of the library.
This safe space for the Tuesday Afghan Women’s group to be together, to freely laugh and joke around together, is the soul nectar that rejuvenates, restores, reignites a relaxed exuding of light.
Not the thought-out flows. Not the precise and translated breath-work. Not even the rest at the end of the practice.
The opportunity to laugh, and to laugh with each other, to be in the company of friends and comforted by other refugee women establishing home in Austin, that’s the medicine.
I’m just a space holder, a space holder for giggling radiant and resilient warriors.
This is an unexpected and tremendous gift from the practice, and absolutely does not remotely resemble my original goals for the class.
Honestly, an hour spent laughing as we stretched in out and out of tree poses emanates more healing power than my governing expectations, and then, there’s the lightening illumination of my own personal lessons embedded in the downdog teaching.
Let Go.
Let go so I can receive and enjoy and organically respond to the needs arising, and wholeheartedly participate in the community beaming and bursting into good-natured fits of laughter.
As I sweep a glance at the women perched on their mats, their toddlers toppling back into their laps, their beautiful babies returned to their arms from assisting social work interns and Refugee Services of Texas employees, I achingly ponder if I was present enough for them, allowing enough for them. My former experiences teaching refugees, my own strong and silent ideas about how a class should go forged a grey viewing screen that projected and dimly blocked the fullness of what occurred.
I want the screen gone. I want an unfiltered life experience. I want to strengthen enough trust in myself to know that I can stay relaxed and adequately respond to whatever arises.
Control, preferences, judgments, expectations slither from fear.
I choose love.
In the choosing of love there’s a letting go of fear, or at least a siding with the fear.
This is an active letting go resonant with the arrival of a chill, a coolness that tingles with anticipation of change. The pushing forward into a season that entices with reflections on what to release to clarify and curate intentions, decisions, actions aligned with a present truth.
Letting go is a moment-to-moment practice. An intentional drop of shoulds to relax deeper and deeper into a heart designed to be open and listening and feeling.
An active letting go to purify and sustain me in my center of power. Embodied presence, an openness that keeps me in tune with my feelings of truth empowers me to discern and respond from a place of steadiness and calm. In my practice of acknowledging and honoring boundaries, the practice of letting go illuminates and transmutes any projections from others to be recycled and cleared out so I maintain a grounded sense of self as I engage, communicate, walk away.
I let go of the projection, I let go of the sling-shot comment, and I let go of closing off my heart, of retracting in my sweetness, of retaliating in charged passive aggressiveness because I can choose to be heart-blazing open and fiercely and gently knowing in my truth, so experiences river by and transcend into further self-realization and understanding of the other person, too.
And laughter is an active letting go.
A remedy that pours us into the heartbeat of the now, because we wouldn’t catch the joke, the whacky turn of events, the absurdity, the quick-witted retort if we weren’t fully engaged and listening. Laughter launches us back into the present, where life vividly unfolds. Laughter is a letting go of the past and future. We can’t be consumed with worry and anxiety when we are immersed in laughing.
Laughing lifts our vibrational energy, a tonic of presence cleansing the heart, mind, soul.
Laughing alchemizes the bitter, the outrage, the hurt into a sweetness that can be metabolized and processed.
A collective chorus of laughter reunites and reinforces a remembering that we belong to a grander story of humanity, that we have each other in this journey.
And the women’s laughter through the yoga class signals a collective letting go: a momentary relinquishment of concerns, a shaking off of awkwardness, a giggle dispersing any fear and enticing others to follow in chuckling suite to reaffirm a safety, a welcoming embrace of community.
I let go to empty out only into effervescent gratitude for the gift of teaching these laughter-wise yogis.