For those of you who know me in the real world, you may remember the era of the back/hip injury a few years ago. With the injury and the babies and work, I abandoned the gym for at least a few years. A lot of drugs, rest and therapy later, and said injury remains but a tweaky memory when I push myself too far.

Well, I’m back in a smart way! Personal training with a goal of rebuilding my support muscles and getting back into bendy things like yoga. Apparently my body remembers, or so the trainer says. She told me which yoga classes I could try, and now I see why she limited me: I’m in wounded bird yoga. Everyone in my classes seems to be recovering from something, and the teacher is pregnant. We’re all just a little careful with ourselves, and are using a multitude of props. I was mentally sneering until I realized how little flex my body currently permits. Touché, mommy-to-be.

At any rate, this class works in some meditation, which I haven’t done in a while. At the end of class, the instructor said,

Be nobody and be nowhere.

Such an odd instruction! Until I started releasing all of my personas: mom with kids tugging on legs, wife with to-do lists and laundry, employee with ambitions and projects, home owner with renovation underway… Even reader, exerciser, planner. Being nobody for a minute, as the first snow swirled across the wall of windows (seriously – I love this place), was the most liberating moment I’ve had in years. Those trappings I let go of go hand in hand with life’s greatest joys. I wouldn’t walk away from any part of my current life for anything! At least, not for more than that quiet moment in the yoga studio.

So I’ll be going back to the other wounded birds, and I’m eating my obnoxious commentary I’d prepared for my trainer. I believe that moment at the end of class may recharge me more than anything else I can come up with. Just don’t tell my brasher self.