The Art of Practice

Recently I went through some binders of old artwork that I’ve kept with me for years and realized it was time for a purge.

It was such a part of my past that I never thought to share it with my husband. When he saw the photos he looked surprised at how pale and unhappy I looked. He knew I went to art school, yet he did not know me or my work back then. The decade of my twenties was like another life time entirely.

After we sat by the fireside later that night, he turned to me and said: “It’s impressive how you’ve changed. You are so much more beautiful and radiant now.”

It felt like the biggest (most important) compliment of my life.

Momentous change has always clipped at the back of my heels kicking me down my path whether I was ready for it or not. I don’t think anyone ever reflected it back to me quite like he did in that moment.

Perhaps he is one of the few people who can actually acknowledge the difference as so few people know me the way he does. My husband sees the vulnerable me. The stubborn me. The grumpy me. My husband sees me in ways I don’t think I’ve allowed anyone else to see me. 

On that day he gave me a gift by saying what he said and by witnessing the changes I have felt so deeply and intimately within.

What struck me most was the tone of awe in his voice, as if to also say: “You know I don’t know that many people who do actually change.” I could see on his face the look of astonishment for that young, lost, searching girl, an entirely different iteration of me.

In that moment I realized just how much my spiritual practice has carried me though my years. It is the one constant. It has been a portal and a pillar for me to execute on the changes I so longed to see come to fruition.

When I found my practice it was in a puddle of sweat and tears on the yoga room floor in Tribeca, NY 2005 finally resting in a newly found pose called Savasana. It was my own personal come to Jesus moment if there ever was one in my life. Though hardly noticeable to anyone else, it sure felt dramatic to me. It was moment I had been waiting for.

I could feel both relief and release of all this unarmed pain I had been carrying around with me for so long. A kind of gentleness and ease swept over my body as I allowed a felt sense of forgiveness come over me. 

I will never forget that first feeling of recognized self-forgiveness.

At the time I did not know what I had found, but I knew it was the direction I had been searching for simply by what it evoked in me. A deep sense of peace and acceptance for myself. I can still recall that moment as if it was yesterday. The sweat. The salt. The tears.

What ensued was a twenty year long journey of finding out what it means to come back home to myself. The self I longed to feel, to embrace, to accept and to love.

Self-love is a practice someone might say, but do we really take the time to feel it on a visceral level? This is what I find myself asking a lot these days.

When do we really feel the naked presence of the sacred with us as we breathe? What does it feel like to move into the next phase of who we are becoming?

Life is the practice. It is the initiation. It is the process of finding out what that means for you and not by anyone else’s definition.

A life that longs to know the spiritual, the quivering nature in things, takes courage to shape and mould. It requires discipline and dedication. It is the moment you recognize that you are making everyday, every moment, a path towards ever more and complete devotion to that which has no name, yet is in everything.

It isn’t linear.

It rarely makes sense.

Yet, in the moments we feel it and recognize ourselves beholden to it there is nothing more real or substantial.

When I think about where I get my strength from I think of my daily practice. How it found me. How it has evolved over time. How it has deepened and continues to deepen.

There were plenty of years, maybe a solid decade, where my life just felt like one catalytic moment after another without much room to collect myself.

And my practice was there.

It was on and off the mat.

It was in and out of the yoga room or therapists office.

It was always there holding me.

Eventually practice isn’t something you do, it becomes part of who you are. It shapes the way you move through the world. In and out of relationships. In and out of identities. Shifting. Sifting. Shaping. You.

I don’t think back then I was capable of valuing it as I do now. For a large part of those two decades I was just trying to find my baseline.

What is a practice?

What is it for me?

A practice needs discipline, but it doesn’t have to be harsh. It needs to be steady, consistent, adaptable, forgiving, generous and shape shifting. A good practice moves with you through life. It is both infinitely creative as much as it is fortifying and nourishing.

I couldn’t imagine moving through the world without this tether to what matters and matters deeply. Everyday I get to find out what that means to me again, and again, and again.

A constant reminder of what is guiding, of what feels true.

The Sanskrit word Sadhana means practice or spiritual practice. It contains the root Sadh which means “to accomplish” or “go to the goal". It’s suffix na denotes the process or means by which one accomplishes or achieves the goal.

Sadhana, the practice, holds both. It is both an aim and the process by which you get to embody that aim. At its core lies a desire at the heart of life to realize what will give way to our ultimate intention.

Perhaps that is what liberation means - to be able to hold both the aim and the process all at once.

And if we are lucky seeing what gives way to a path that will bring us home. A path that reveals what we most need to experience in life in order to arrive at home within ourselves.