The Third They Leap

“Yoga is a powerful vehicle for change.
As you build strength, you start to believe in your own potential.”
ㅡ Tiffany Cruikshank | yoga teacher and sports medicine specialist 

I am 13 days into this raw food fast now and let me tell you, there are things that come up.  And out.  My skin is peeling everywhere.  I have a few pimples.  My hair is kinda greasy (which is a new one for me).  My nose will not stop running.  I am irritable over things that shouldn't really annoy me.  And I am a big fat crybaby.  Let me repeat--I am a BIG FAT CRYBABY.  I almost cried on my way to work the other day because I had a sudden feeling of being completely overwhelmed.  I almost cried in yoga class when I realized I could do a pose I'd never been able to do before.  I almost cried when Gavin's cub scout den leader said the next requirement we are working on is writing.... If you know my son, you know that his autism has caused verbal and written language issues that make writing send him into a near panic attack... and to try to make him write?  I've actually had meltdowns of my own trying to get him to do his homework.

Today's crybaby moment was during the sweatiest yoga class of my life.  Sweatiest EVER.  Even my elbows were sweating.  I was wiping my face with my shirt so I could see.  It was ridiculous.  Anyway, something I heard from seasoned rosarians when I first started growing roses was this:  "The first they sleep, the second they creep, the third they leap."  This means that the first year of a rose's growth it doesn't appear to do much.  It "sleeps."  But it isn't really sleeping; it is actually establishing its roots.  The next season, the rose will "creep."  As its roots have taken a firm hold, it can now start to grow upward, bloom a little more, get a little height on it.  But the third season, a rose will "leap."  Suddenly that sucker is all over the place, growing over the trellis or the fence, blooming its damn fool head off, and needing pruned occasionally to keep its health, its shape, and its focus.  You might even have to take the lopping shears to it if its ego gets out of control.

And as cheesy as it sounds, at that moment, standing in trikonasana and trying not slip on my own sweat, I felt like the rose.  Yes, I have just boiled my life down to a trite simile, but I totally mean it.  In my third year of practice, I suddenly feel like I am taking off, on the mat doing poses that used to scare me or that I was not yet capable of doing, and off the mat trying things I would have previously avoided, reacting more positively to things that used to upset me, taking leaps that I would have been too cautious to take before.

So, after a year's worth of deliberation and telling myself that I "can't make it work," I have decided to apply for a yoga teacher training to start in the fall.  I have no idea how I am going to pay for it, when I am going to find the time to do the study for it, or where I am going to ultimately go with it, but I'm going to leap and hope that the net appears.  I'd make a toast to the new me, but I'm fasting so all I can drink is water and herbal tea.

I leave you with Queen Elizabeth, the first rose I ever rooted by myself, and her first ever bloom--the one that finally appeared the year she turned three.

Wish me luck, and Namaste.

My Rosa "Queen Elizabeth," rooted from my husband's mother's rosebush in 2008.