i begin to wonder

Sometimes I go to yoga class and I really can't help but wonder. Sometimes I have something really pressing on my mind and Chris' closing zen phrase will seem to address me directly, as though she knew. Sometimes I build my intention mentally before class and that night's instructor will ask as a class that we build that very same intention on our mats for that practice. Sometimes I can't help but wonder what it is... How, how, HOW is it always seeming to be in tune with exactly what is going on in my mind? Tonight, our teacher was Mark, who hasn't been to instruct us in 5 weeks. Just last week I realized that my upper body strength was improving vastly. No... I still can't do a push up, but I realized I can lower myself with impressive (to me) control, leading with my chest instead of my hips and... what's more... I can hover. I can hover. I can hold myself an inch off the floor for about 10 seconds without struggling. Wow, I never thought I'd see the day.

Anyway... sure enough, Mark walks in class tonight and almost as though he knew I was mentally tooting my own horn about my great arms... he humbled me. Not with spite, obviously. And not in a way that made me think, "Oh, I'm not so strong as I thought after all." There was no mental frowning. He humbled me but he gave me confidence. He worked my arms. He let them show themselves off (again, only to myself) but he also seemed to let them know that they certainly aren't done. I'm digressing, but it was exciting. It was like my arms were getting a chance to be excited about the adventure that lay before them. Lucky for me Mark will be teaching the next 2 Tuesdays, so they'll probably get some more action, those arms.

The point is... I am beginning to wonder. How much of this "speaking to me" is just chance? How many times can that happen? Could it be that the message is just all encompassing, so it could speak to anyone in any situation? (The thing is, I know I've been skeptical about this kind of stuff and I'm very, very hesitant because the words I'm going to have to use, for lack of any better, are going to have a religious connotation, despite my not intending them to have one at all.) But I really just don't know if I think it's all chance anymore.

Laura said in her blog the other day, "I believe in energy." And I loved that. Simply and beautifully said. So now I'm really thinking I'm on my way to tapping into that energy, that it's really there. I think it's energy that goes by many different names: God, Brahma, Allah, Mother Earth etc etc. But tonight I think I realized it's there. I believe in it. I believe in Energy. It's there for us to touch 24/7. It's speaking to each of us in every moment. All we have to do is come to the moment, to learn to be alive, and it can be ours.