FREE Summer Yoga in the Park for Everyone

That's what my little sandwich board sign says and three days a week during the summer I pick up my sign at a little store and carry it across the street and into a little public park overlooking the water. The park is at the north end of a very famous public market and many tourists make their way through the market then into the park to take in the view and take a few pictures of the water and Mount Rainier if they're lucky. Local people spend time there, too, although typically they are local people that the city would prefer that tourists not have to encounter: men sleeping on benches, people making quick exchanges while glancing furtively around, a woman singing to herself while she staggers around the park in too large pants kicking garbage cans.

This is where I brought my yoga for 2 months this summer. I love teaching yoga and I have to admit that part of what I love is the part where I get to stand up in the front of the class and be the teacher. I don't think this is a bad thing, but I do think it's possibly a dangerous thing. The possibility exists of loving the role to the exclusion of what's being taught and who is there to learn. Teaching in the park stripped me right back down to basics.

I brought my little sign with me and set it up. Then I'd fuss a little with the tape and the business cards and my belongings, the placement of the sign. Eventually I'd run out of little distracting things to do and there it would be, the requirement that I just begin. And so I would begin, grounding through my feet, connecting through the top of my head with the sky, forming a circle of energy around myself. But not too tight a circle! "Come Join Me!" says my sign and "Come join me!" must be the message I send out into the park. This can't be my turtle self doing my yoga practice safely in my shell; no, this has to be my soft and fragile human self at play, broadcasting my message out into the world, "I'm all alone and I am vulnerable out here but it's so beautiful and so good to be alive here. You will be safe if you join me. I will be safe if you join me. Together we will no longer be alone."

Then I breathe: Breathing in I raise my arms up, breathing out I bring palms together and draw them down my center. As I breathe, my mental chatter of fear, fear, fear clatters itself to a close and I begin to feel the air around me, hear the laughing and the seagulls, see the water responding to whatever the weather is today. I think I could just breathe for an hour here in this park and I would be the better for it.

Some days I do my whole practice, people come and they go, some talk to me, some take my picture, but mostly I remain alone. I am sad that I've been left alone for the hour and my energy slows but I am still safe and I am okay. Nothing bad has happened. Most days though the miracle happens. Someone stops and wants to join me. The woman on a short trip to Seattle who extends her visit and misses her plane and joins me twice in the park. The man who has been on a fishing boat for many months, but the boat has broken down and he might not have a job and he might not get paid and he doesn't have a place to live but he'd like to do some Sun Salutations with me. The Latino worker who spends his mornings standing on a corner waiting for some construction firm to pick him up and give him work and doesn't really know anything about yoga but it looks like it would be helpful. He comes again and says not only did the yoga make him feel better but it must have brought him luck–he got a job! The Black homeless woman who joins in behind me, so quietly that I don't realize she's there until I turn around. The big guy from Philly who's heard about this yoga stuff and wants to get a little more flexible...could I just lead him through a little? The man who brings me a green peach and sings for an hour to me and my student; he even takes requests for our background music. The little man from Iran in his suit and his dress shoes with the most radiant smile I've ever seen. Still smiling, he tells me how very very sad he is, that his wife is ill and he just wanders the city with no one to talk with because he doesn't speak much English. The floaty woman who drifted into Seattle for a month and the current she caught happened to bring her to this park this morning, and isn't it an interesting coincidence that she's been looking for outdoor meditative movement opportunities? The couple from Pennsylvania who don't join me, but who come over at the end of my session to thank me for my work and tell me that they wish they had something similar back home. I can hope that what they felt was my desire to offer this practice and this teaching as a gift to the city I love and the people who populate it.

Little connections, brief encounters, and every one of them so very important. Not allowed to hide under the title of teacher, my being cries out, "Is anyone out there? Am I alone here? I don't want to be lost and falling into nothing!" These moments call back to me, "We are all alone and we are all falling into nothing but we are here together and together we are large and spacious and there is nowhere for us to fall and no way to get lost. Be calm. You are safe." We are safe together.

copyright 2007 J. Autumn Needles