Adjustments

Adjusting to a new place is never easy. Even for all the moving around I´ve done recently, the first step is always elusive at first. I find myself surveying unfamiliar surroundings finding things that I love and things that I hate, things that I´m immediately drawn to and things I flat out resist. As I begin to relate with these things, however, they can tend to reveal themselves as quite their opposites, giving me whole new perspectives. Like yoga inversions, they turn me on my head. I suppose this is why I love traveling so much. We can learn so much about ourselves from a little bit of discomfort.

Yesterday, I spent my first full day on the beach in Miramar, expecting it to work its usual magic. Sitting in sand near the ocean tends to make me feel right at home wherever in the world I am. Instead of the peace and space I´d hoped for, I found thousands of Argentines packed together like sardines, both in and out of the crashing sea. Hyperactive children ran everywhere, superchared from too much matè and sugar. One small boy even unloaded a can of carnival foam all over me while trying to aim at his sister. With no room to move, every person walking by resulted in coarse sand kicked in the face. Most annoying of all was the myriad of vendors who passed by one per second screaming out whatever they were selling, as if you didn´t notice as they kicked hot sand at you. Cries of ´Heladoooooosssss!´and ´Chorrrrroooooossss!´ finally ran me off the beach, irritated and feeling that this is just not the place for me.

Today, I tried again to find solace at the beach, though a bit further down the coast from the hoards of vacationers. Fede, more familiar with the town, led Bruno and I to a mostly unpopulated stretch of gold sand where the only sounds we could hear were the waves tumbling ashore. It was just us and nature for as far as I could see. I stepped from the car and lumbered toward the ocean noticing how difficult it is to move through the deep, sinking sand of this place. The stronger I struggled on, the more deeply the earth swallowed my feet. Feeling frustrated again at this new terrain, I trudged on toward the water seeking out a place to practice.

Ankle deep in sandy earth, I saluted the sun. My Downward Dog was buried up to the wrists and ankles. My Cobra was more like an earthworm. Buried in the groove I´d made, Corpse Pose lived up to its name. By the time I sat up, I was just another grain of sand.

Somehow yoga practice always sloughs us down to truth.

I found my way back, later, to a more populated swatch of beach closer to home. I stretched out on my pareo to read, but before long, heard the now familiar bellow, ¨Churrrrrroooossss!¨ and thought, oh please no. When I looked up, I saw a wiry, suntanned man lugging a heavy basket three times wider than himself, marching his way through the ankle-deep hot sand, working hard to earn his day´s living. My heart swelled.

Perhaps the irritations we feel are meant to capture our attention and force us to look at what we need to see. Anger and frustration are opportunities to love. Resistance is the boiling point before dispersing into acceptance. The things we don´t like are oftentimes mirrors showing us our own blemishes. This morning I´d searched for a perfect place to ´practice yoga´when, in fact, the world is the mat and wherever we are is the best place to unfold it. This new home has me looking myself square in the eyes and seeing where my own work is. The starting place, as always, is exactly where I am. The challenge, at heart, is always the same: how to open unconditionally to love.

On some level, we´re all forging our way through deep sand, aren´t we?