A few months ago, I was teaching a one-on-one class online today to a student newish to yoga. On this day, when I asked her how things were going, she replied “I’m just walking towards the darkness at the end of the tunnel.”
This student began taking yoga classes in January of 2020, in her mid forties, as a New Years Resolution. She told herself she would take four classes and then be able to check it off her "list of suggested stress lowering activities." She purchased an expensive mat, as the only one available, commenting to herself as she paid, “this will be a waste of money.” After the first four classes, since she didn’t hate yoga nearly as much as she had thought she would, she continued on, committing to two classes a week even as we took the practice out of the studio and on to Zoom. Six months into her practice, she said that yoga was saving her body and mind, working from home during the pandemic, and we began weekly privates online.
Her answer to my question “I’m just walking towards the darkness at the end of the tunnel,” paused me. 2020 had been the kind of rager that was leaving us all with a really bad hangover. When we spoke, it was mid-November and we were waiting for results of the US election, waiting for Brexit, waiting for a vaccine, waiting to be able to travel and see loved ones.
She went on to give thanks to the angelic forces that helped her find yoga this year, how when she started in January, before the pandemic and lock-downs, she would have never have guessed that it would be the thing that saved her body from so much sedentary working from home or the thing that saved her mind in this time of extreme isolation.
All of us are living in this darkness of the tunnel right now, I thought. The image is such a beautiful analogy, darkness in the tunnel when there’s no light to guide you towards the exit.
Some folks, we know, are running around in circles, feeling along the walls and figuratively banging their heads against them, trying to make a plan or adhere to a sense of control. Others have been able to stop, pause, and take that time in darkness to face the darkness within. Those of us who can sit with ourselves in the darkness of the tunnel, who stop looking for the exit, or waiting for the light to come back on, have this very powerful time to face our own shadows, find our own inner voice, dream our own dreams about the potential new reality that is shifting.
Why does this darkness, unknowing, lack of control, bring up so much fear, and anxiety? Whether the darkness is outside of us, or inside of our own shadow sides, it’s not easy to sit with, at first.
But the longer you sit still in the darkness you adjust. Literally if the eyes are open, they will adjust to the lack of light to be able to see more. Internally, if the eyes are closed looking inward, you will find the light of synapses firing, neurons and crystalline structures lighting up like galaxies in hubble telescope. If the eyes are closed and the mind’s eye open ups into manifestation and imagination, you find a full feature length film on memory upon memory, to be faced, reckoned with or karmically balanced to be release.
Darkness is like this. Even without the lights on, there’s still life being lived, breath to be breathed, shadows uncast.
Being in the darkness at the end of the tunnel. Can you find stillness there? Can you find your breath? Can you find your way back to center and stop running in circles, banging your head against the proverbial wall?
It was only a short time later that Pantone released it’s colors of the upcoming year 2021: Ultimate Gray and Illuminating. How suiting, I thought, another validation that we are all in this together, inside the dark tunnel, all looking for a light to illuminate our way out of the gloom. This was only the second time that Pantone released two colors for a year, rather than just one, and the duality between grey and bright yellow summarized the dualities that had been warring all year long.
I’ve sat with this idea for the past months, watching as those in the dark create such ruckus banging their heads again the wall, while others took to stillness waiting for a light to come on.
If 20/20 is perfect vision, perhaps the envisioning of the post 2020 era is really an act of taking off our rose colored glasses and seeing the world as it truly is. The veils of Maya recede and we see our own parts in the human drama as it unfolds.
Removing the rose colored glasses means letting go of blur that says we are “going back to normal” when we get the vaccine, or a new president is inaugurated or when we can go on vacation again. Removing the rose tinted lenses is to see clearly that #blacklivesmatter #climatechangeisreal and there is a #wealthgap and #incomeinequality.
Politics, science, or escapism isn’t really a light at the end of the tunnel. The light in the tunnel is you. The light in the tunnel is in the heart of each of us. It’s our duty to shine the heart light brighter, out into everything we touch and do, to love each other more and find that we are, truly all in this together. #oneness
Yoga helps.
Om your way home.
If you know someone who’s running in circles banging their head against the metaphorical tunnel wall, challenge them to four yoga classes. Just for fun. Just to check it off the list of possible activities to reduce stress.
I’ll be running a free beginner’s course in February for all Patreon supporters with a +1 coupon to give to a friend for a self.
#yogaforbeginners #beginnersmind #darkness #shadowwork #lightattheendofthetunnel #selflove #yogaheals #nurtureyourinnerlight #innerlight #guidance #pantone2021 #illuminate #stillness #yogainspiration #breathwork #breathe #concentration #meditation #maya #illusion #illusionsofmaya #bethelight #herecomesthesun #shine
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