Sarah Jefferis
The first time I walked into a yoga class, I was in graduate school at Cornell, working on an MFA in poetry. I had just moved from teaching junior high in Chiba City, Japan, and felt more than out of place in this college town. I was heartsick and heartbroken. I had no idea if this thing called Yoga would help or hurt, but I knew enough to know I needed something to shift. I didn’t speak then about a relationship to emotional pain; I just succumbed to it or smacked it quietly and shoved it tight in a jar in the back of the closet. I didn’t think of healing or feeling to heal it or the sound of OM. I didn’t hear sounds, really, except the scrape of a chair of a much smarter grad student who belonged or this new winter wind that blew the snow sideways in my eyebrows.
I was nervous to be in this class in the basement of Helen Newman. Haunted from the mirrors of my childhood days in ballet, afraid that this teacher would tell me I did not belong. I grabbed a mat and some blankets and sat in the back of the room. I didn’t believe my body would do what I wanted or that it would be able to relax. I fell off the mat every time we were asked to balance in tree. Since then, I have learned that falling is a kind of practice. “Yoga is an ongoing participatory experiment in which the world and every part of our life becomes our laboratory,” says Deborah Adele. I didn’t know how to experiment; I had never been in a laboratory, but I loved the idea of thinking of my life as one. In Yoga, I learned to make friends with my body. Adele continues with: “Yoga is a technology for removing the illusionary veil that stands between us and the animating force of life.” The force of life, or source as one might call it- name it whatever you please—is what I reach for/long for in meditation and in my Yin practice. In other words, “The quieter you become, the more you can hear,” says Rumi.
Over the years of being in Ithaca and Los Angeles, I made a conscious commitment to the mat whether or not I was heartbroken from the world, or if I could not finish a poem, and when I wanted to feel strong and embrace both stillness and possibility. I believe that Yoga is a place to honor the creative spirit within and that it is for every body. I want to encourage people to offer loving kindness to their own skin and bones. Yoga has also helped me find harmony between my creative work as a writer,owning my own editing business, and solo motherhood. My yoga training is in Vinyasa Flow from Mighty, and my yin training is with Jenni Sol.
Off the mat, you can find me writing, dancing, practicing reiki, drinking coffee, or catching flights, as I have always loved a good adventure.