A Love Affair From the Mat

I have a lifelong love affair with yoga. 

Yoga on the mat. Yoga off the mat. Yoga day and night. Just, yoga. 

Love affairs open us to speculation, don't they? People are intrigued, even if the affair is decades old and not at all wild and sizzling. As a result of the inquisitive nature of humans, I've gotten a lot of questions over the years about the practices. 

Some questions are ridiculous. A few cross boundaries that have led to separation of relationships. Most, however, are valid and valuable, and as they are queries that arise repeatedly I believe it has some worth to address them. 

So, a couple of days each week I'm going to chat about topics that I've been approached about. No worries, there won't be any in-depth philosophical discussions, pretzel-twisting tutorials, or Sanskrit lessons. 

Just yoga chat, as if we were sitting beneath a tree or beside a stream, sharing space and falling into the layers of discussions that open when we contemplate yoga. 

So, we begin. 

And that, of course, reminds me of the first sutra of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras "atha yoga anushasanam." It's generally translated to mean "now begins the study of yoga." But when I think about this I often replace "begin" with "share" and that makes this undertaking very cozy, doesn't it?