Part of the return to health has included a return to yoga every week.  I’ve missed it.  So too have my core muscles because apparently they are on strike – or having a tantrum.  But I committed to approaching yoga this time with a truly non-competitive attitude.  The teacher often says about certain poses, “When in doubt, leave it out.”  And I catch myself saying, “Hah!  Didn’t have to with that one!”

If “No” is a form of Mu then that was a Mu-Mu.

For 75 minutes twice a week, I watch my nonsense mind make so much more of every moment than it needs to.  And thankfully my body doesn’t listen.  Or at least, my muscles don’t because as time passed, strength accrued with diligence.

So, I’m learning.  What needs to be left out most is that need to be more than what is possible at this moment.  That’s not to say more isn’t available in the next moment; just not this one.  And in a yoga school as in a zen community or any place at all, there are ample opportunities to want more.    I’ve been successful at passing up the 200-hour yoga teacher’s course and the 5-day yoga intensive.  I’ve let go of teacher trainings on some beautiful beach somewhere and I’ve even resisted heading down to Toronto to train with the Yoga for Round Bodies folks!

Mu!

Has Mu become a cliché?

Or maybe saying “Oh it’s a koan!” has become a cliché.  A spiritual mobius strip in the highway to enlightenment?

I ramble.  Or maybe not.

We’ve been spending our weekends rambling… hiking.  Why?  Well, I woke up one morning and decided that was a nice thing to do – waking up, I mean – and something I’d like to continue to do.  As I often say to my family, it’s not the heart attack that will kill me; it’s that heart attack that doesn’t kill me that will kill me.

How’s that for a koan!

I doubt I’m alone in fearing a life of slow degradation.  Despite watching so many people courageously living their own lives through after heart attacks, cancer, various diseases and injuries, I continue to doubt my capacity to live with grace and ease in such circumstances.

So, I woke up one morning.  And I decided that settling for waking up and waddling to the bathroom then bemoaning the double chin and the plus size PJs (I know, I know… you will now need several doses of gore-filled alien-invasion movies to get that picture out of your head) was not enough waking up.

Mu!

When I worked with that koan, I realized that there is an alternative for “This is it!”

This is not it!

So we began the weekend hikes.