I tend to think of yoga as the promised land.

In my own practice, I’ve watched yoga dissolve my tendency towards panic attacks, self-loathing, laziness, and depression. From talking with my friends, students and teachers, I can make the assumption that I am not alone in that.

Yoga can turn any number of bad days into days that are not only manageable, but full of purpose, because as far as I can tell, yoga gives us the internal ability to find the space between our thoughts and our attachment to our thoughts, and live there.

There’s this little, eeny-teeny magic space right in between those two places, and before I stepped onto a yoga mat, I had no idea it existed. I was so completely and thoroughly attached to my thoughts to the point that when someone said, “You are not your thoughts,” I said, “You are full of shit.”

During a really spiritually potent practice, I can not only find that little place of magic, but I can pry into it, like fingers prying into a book, and I can expand it until my entire perspective melts away and I can become life itself.

So, woo! I get to know magic and probably so do you (since you’re reading this). Congratulations to us, if life is subdivided into the umbrellas of winning and losing, I’m sure we are all standing firmly under the winning division—for yoga has turned many otherwise excruciating experiences into experiences perhaps not filled with light and love, but certainly into experiences that we can be grateful for.

The frustrating part of all of this is that despite the fact that I know that magic exists and I know that it exists only because I believe in it, and I am the only one who can create and shape this for myself—this doesn’t mean that I am always living inside of it. 

In fact, it seems like not only am I not always living inside of it, but sometimes it doesn’t even feel like an option to live inside of it.

I find that I remind myself daily of the magic, and every time I come back to it, I think, Well of course, it’s so simple! All I have to do is choose love! All I have to do is remember that this is only a perspective and there are an infinite number of ways to look at something and I get to choose which way to look at it all! I am the only one who can choose peace!

And it seems like the next time I really need that reminder, it’s completely gone. The next time I find myself wrapped in only one way of looking at something—where my way of looking at something is the absolute right way of looking at something, and I am right and others are wrong, and fucking dammit, someone agree with me and validate me and fucking change what’s going on in the world to reflect my very narrow set of wants please, now, don’t make me furrow my eyebrows at you, because I will, and once that happens, no one is having a good day anymore–I am completely and thoroughly wrapped in that perspective to the point where I cannot even remind myself that there are other ways of looking at things.

I feel very Seussian about this whole thing, and so I will continue with a little reminder from old Ted:

“Fame! You’ll be famous as famous can be,
with the whole wide world watching you win on TV.

Except when they don’t.
Because, sometimes, they won’t.

I’m afraid that some times
you’ll play lonely games too.
Games you can’t win
’cause you’ll play against you.

All Alone!
Whether you like it or not,
Alone will be something
you’ll be quite a lot.

And when you’re alone, there’s a very good chance
you’ll meet things that scare you right out of your pants.
There are some, down the road between hither and yon,
that can scare you so much you won’t want to go on.”

Tough times are not optional. They are fundamental and important and inescapable. The moment we rid ourselves of tough times is the moment we turn into God.

If there’s another thing that yoga has taught me, it’s the value of community. It’s the value of knowing that despite our mad rush to end our suffering and to cross the finish line towards enlightenment, that doesn’t always happen. We are in this together because it doesn’t happen for me, it doesn’t happen for you, and it doesn’t happen for Dr. Seuss.

And maybe it’s not supposed to. Maybe our life is supposed to be exactly the way it is, with all the losing battles against ourselves, and with all the mornings we wake up and schlep around only to go to bed at night and think, what is the whole point of this life thing, again? 

Because even though my suffering is very nuanced and specific to my own thoughts and beliefs and the people I keep around me and the people I don’t keep around me, I know that I’m not alone. Because Dr. Seuss knows what I’m talking about. You know what I’m talking about. The teacher who puts me in child’s pose knows what I’m talking about. The six therapists I’ve had in my life know what I’m talking about. And I’d put money on it that Patanjali himself knows what I’m talking about.

Perhaps it’s not that yoga is supposed to solve our problems. Perhaps it’s that yoga gives us the ability to feel like shit and wake up five years from now and look back on that time we felt like shit and say, Dear God, thank you, thank you thank you thank you. Because not everyone gets to come into that perspective.

Perhaps it’s not about wanting enlightenment, perhaps it’s about wanting life exactly the way it is.

“On and on you will hike
and I know you’ll hike far
and face up to your problems
whatever they are.

You’ll get mixed up, of course,
as you already know.
You’ll get mixed up
with many strange birds as you go.
So be sure when you step.
Step with care and great tact
and remember that Life’s
a Great Balancing Act.
Just never forget to be dexterous and deft.
And never mix up your right foot with your left.

And will you succeed?
Yes! You will, indeed!
(98 and 3 / 4 percent guaranteed.)

KID, YOU’LL MOVE MOUNTAINS!”

Thanks, Teddy. And to that I say:

When I feel bad, I’ll still lumber along
And climb up a peak to sing a mountain-air song
With these small feet of mine, one left and one right
I’ll live with my love and live with my fight
Until my little left foot and right foot get huge
And with one baby scootch, this mountain will move
Just like old Teddy said once in a poem
About me moving mountains, and life being on loan.

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Ed: Bryonie Wise