Turn, Turn, Turn: Times A'Changing

Our yoga teacher training finished tonight, in a warm studio, on a bitterly cold night. It stopped on a whisper, not a bang, on a chant, with people drifting out into the ice and snow, waving good-bye as they left the studio.  There's a conclusion, but no real ending: there will be a graduation and many of us will meet often, as students and teachers.  Others will not-there are those whose presence will be remembered, no longer experienced, as we move back to our busy lives and new beginnings.

To me, this finish felt more like a cycle, a shift in the circle of time to which many Eastern philosophies subscribe.  Rather than having a starting and stopping point with steps along the way, yogic time revolves through time and space.  Each new beginning marks an end to something.  Each ending traces back to those new beginnings.  Round and round we go, passengers on the wheel of time.

I've spent the last 14 months immersed in yoga. Each day saw me in the studio, on the mat, off the mat, away from the studio, practising, teaching, living, breathing yoga.  I've had days where I was on a high, at the top of the wheel, looking out on the landscape of possibilities.  Other days, I've been stuck at the bottom, waiting for that cycle to pull me out of a slump and back towards the top of the wheel again. In this moment, I'm not sure where I am.  It may be that teacher training was the highlight of my yoga experience and I'm on the flip side of the wheel.  It could just be that the past year and some was the resting point of a cycle which will whisk me up to a view I can't imagine at the moment.  

More likely than not, where I am on that wheel, on this particular cycle of time, doesn't matter.  What does matter is, that when all this began, more often than not, I couldn't catch my breath for fear of what might come as the wheel spun round.  Now, it feels as though, no matter how fast that wheel turns, no matter where I am on any given cycle, I've found my seat.  Now, I can breathe.

So, to everyone who rode that wheel with me, who held my hand when the ride became too frightening, who kept me in my seat when I felt I might spin away, teachers, fellow students, friends, Thank You.  It's been quite the ride.  

Namaste.

Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions: Image courtesy of Wikicommons