Lifes' Unexpected

Dear Yogis & Yoginis,

On the way back from a party one evening, a day after New Year's, I tripped on the wet, rain drenched, brick steps leading from the garage to our back yard (no, I had not been drinking!) Ordinarily, it's no big deal, I would just stumble a little and continue on. But that evening, I was carrying a large ceramic salad bowl, my favorite blue and white. As I stumbled, it slipped out of my hands. I stepped up, and reached down to catch the bowl. It hit the step, shattered into pieces in a split second. I stood up, dumbfounded, and upset that my favorite bowl was no more. Only a moment later, when I left the scene of the accident to open the door, that I saw blood all over the floor. One of the broken pieces had popped up and slashed my wrist, and my right foot was caught on the step and was cut as well.
After several stitches, and bandages were applied to my wrist and toe at the hospital, it was clear that I would not be able to apply any weight on my right hand and right foot for a while.
Suddenly, life had taken an unpleasant turn. Yoga and weight training had to stop; I had some difficulty walking and hiking; both of those were temporary inconveniences. Worst of all, I had a gash on my wrist that looked like a suicide attempt!
How often have we run into an unexpected happening, without being prepared for it. We have taken so much of our lives for granted. I was making good progress with yoga practice and weight training and was assuming that it would continue. Then suddenly everything had to stop. I could almost feel my newly gained muscles shriveling, my flexibility tightening, and my confidence dropping. Of course those "feelings" were mostly mental acrobats playing with me. I had to calm down and re-program my schedules to accommodate the new situation. It taught me a lesson to appreciate wellness and health. It also taught me to let go of the anxiety of not being able to continue "business as usual" by doing what I could for the time being as my wounds healed. Both wounds did heal, and despite the scars, I am happy to be back to my routines.
Embracing the constant changes we experience will allow us to become more flexible physically as yogis, but also more flexible and healthy mentally, able to let go of expectations, judgments, and cravings.

"There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse; as I have found in traveling in a stagecoach, it is often a comfort to shift one's position and be bruised in a new place."
---Washington Irving ---

Namaste,
Clarie