Yoga While in Seclusion

A little over two years ago, began a process that I suppose I will call an awakening, or death, of myself that forced me to go into a sort of seclusion. It’s been almost two years since I limited all my communication and interactions to only those required for living and being that it was also during the pandemic, I either stayed indoors, or took walks alone in the city and in nature.

I tried to exercise, walk, and do yoga on my own, or following a prerecorded or live yoga instruction online. However, in so many ways my body was reacting to things happening to me, and was also the messenger and a teacher in my spiritual process, and so I was in much discomfort. In addition, the yoga I was doing, although helpful to a limited extent, was not at all the same as taking an in-person class.

Although I am still in this seclusion state, I recognized that it was time to care for my body with the type of yoga that has nourished me in the past. This includes a space that has been bathed over and over with sacred, fast vibrating energy, that has been protected and cared for so that a powerful container has been created where I could go to nourish my corporeal body (which is inseparable from my noncorporeal self). I found such a place a 15 minute walk from where I have been living.

The first time I went there, only just a week ago, once I started practicing the yoga guided by the teacher, something opened and was allowed to flow in my body. It simply is not the same doing yoga from home, and I suspect for a variety of reasons:

1. I am living in an energetically powerful part of the city where there is a chaos occurring. It is an apex point of suffering in this city, with the energies of many, many years of suffering (ancient and current) and playing out of the different dynamics of human suffering (such as power, control, etc.) and it has been part of my lessons to recognize this and learn from it. The result of this though, is that those lessons are my chronic experience in and around my current home. I often feel extremely ill and have all sorts of reactions as I undergo this learning process.
2. Because the space, or container I am attempting to practice in already has other things going on as described above, when I bring in a prerecorded (or live) yoga stream through the internet into the space, it is a dissonant, incompatible energy stream. So, although the ones I have chosen are certainly lighter than the energy of the space, they are serving to lighten the space and support me and my body a bit, but it almost is feeble compared to the energy vortex of my current home.
3. In contrast, when I go to this particular yoga studio (it must be noted that a different yoga studio did not have the same effect, so the energy of the space is very important), I am leaving that particular apex point of energy and am able to temporarily enter a new field of which to be surrounded by that allows me a break from being fully immersed in that other, chaotic, difficult energy field.

I have found it to be medicinal to go to this yoga studio at least once a day. Although the teacher and the students in the room certainly bring their own energies into the space, gratefully, the studio, music, and yoga itself has been a wonderful bit of tonic for the hour or so that I’m there.

I always wonder about the history of a place when I get strong feelings from it. This space, its original intention and use, was that of a livery stable. Horses are powerful healers. Later it had other uses, but I wonder if the original intention and energy of the horses for all those years imprinted the space. Or, if I could be tapping into that sacred aspect as I come there seeking specifically the sacred.

I want to note that there are so many energies still zooming around the space at all times during these classes. My neighbors, and their insecurity or judgement, or solemness, or the teacher who wants control. It’s a lot to feel it, and I’m learning. Being around all of these energies is definitely impacting me. I find myself eating more and craving foods more sugary and processed. I also seek respite once I return from class, listening to a fantasy audiobook and needing to recover, even though my body and soul delights in the yoga and craves it. It’s interesting and part of my learning at this time to begin to understand what’s going on with these contrasts and to see if I can begin to understand it all better or manage it by “playing” with the energies. We shall see.