side stepping

this morning i didn't go running but instead did ashtanga yoga, something of almost as high value for me as running.


i say almost because there can be only one number one, and running has that spot; however, ashtanga has, especially during the past six months, gained more and more importance for me. i haven't been practicing it that long and am not very advanced, but still, even the relatively short time i have done it and the level i have reached during that time have given me a lot, both physically and mentally. 


i am not a spiritual person at all, but i still find certain serenity while practicing yoga -- some times more than others. i guess it is the physicality of the practice, and how i can absorb myself wholly into it; during yoga it sometimes feels i am almost able to block everything else out and just exist in that single moment. it is very refreshing, and very calming.


this morning, after the yoga, as i was getting dressed in the locker room it occurred to me that when i look at the past it always somehow seems so much more hassle free, so much easier; and yet i know that it necessarily wasn't so, as there are always conflicts and other negative things that make life sometimes heavy. but maybe it is so that after time passes the irrelevant ceases to exists, that your memory erases the things that weren't important at all; maybe the troubles and hardships i thought were so defining and genuine at the time never really mattered.


and if i can let go of that baggage with the help of time, perhaps i can learn to do it faster; perhaps i can even learn to do it before it becomes a part of my past.