Cross-Training Days: Reflections on Yoga

Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden, Charlotte, North Carolina

My interest in yoga sprung equally from jealousy and curiosity.

I was newly 21 and I had been dating my coworker for a few months. My coworker and his ex-girlfriend still lived together because they had broken up shortly after moving in with each other and neither had enough money to live on their own.

It was awkward, but I had worked with my new boyfriend for several years and I trusted him. That, and he (and I) rarely saw her because of differing work schedules and her new boyfriend.

However, one night when we were at his apartment, watching Deadwood and eating take-out Chinese, she returned to the apartment, carrying her yoga mat under her arm, faintly perspiring, smelling of incense, and glowing.

I mean, she was radiant.

In less than a second, I - who until this point, had been blissfully naive and secure in my new relationship - felt threatened by the clear beauty shining from her eyes. There was power alive in this woman, a raw human energy that, my reasoning went, if I was attracted to, how could he not be?

The jealousy quickly abated, but a raging curiosity soon followed.


What did it feel like? Could I do it well? Would I find a way to calm my all too busy mind? Could I create that glow? Did I have the discipline to maintain it?

Still a poor student, I asked my mom to buy me a yoga DVD for that Christmas. The rest, as they say, is history.

My practice is less than perfect and has seen better years, but I am infinitely grateful for the gifts and tools it has provided me. I said previously that yoga is the yin to my running yang - two halves of the whole. Two practices that are about breath, motion, and place.

South Beach, northern Washington coast

Two practices that can be enhanced by accessories and props (e.g. watches, special clothing, eye-pillows) or stripped to their simplest state and done anywhere, at any time.

I like to think that both running and yoga have given me the ability to harness what I was so startled to see in her eyes and her carriage that night. Life's light can get so buried in our souls; I like believing that I've found a way to let it bring color to my cheeks, to glow.