It couldn’t have arrived at a more perfect time. An unexpected message caused my phone to buzz near the end of my work day. Do you want to lead a retreat for teens at my farm?
Three weeks later, a small busload of high schoolers walked into her barn while we chatted about the agenda. They were ten minutes early, and more prepared than I had anticipated. My agenda for the day was defined, but loosely. With plenty of room for options, I had not wanted to assume we would share a yoga class together. Instead, I had factored in time for yoga-ish activities.
Imagine my delight when I realized I needed to make a quick wardrobe change and set up the space in the loft while my eager yogis enjoyed a light breakfast of yogurt and fruit downstairs. Reluctance had not arrived that morning on the bus, only eagerness and anticipation.
It is rare that I define anything with the word perfect, but as the quiet magic of connection threaded through the morning, I knew each one of us was where we needed to be. If a small group of teens can willingly leave their phones in a box for three hours to practice yoga together, gather leaves and stones to happily create nature mandalas, and harvest lavender in the hot sun with joy, then how could I define a morning with any word other than perfect?
I want to share some of the beautiful mandalas that were created during our day together. And, if you happen to find yourself near Warner, New Hampshire in the future during lavender season, do stop by Pumpkin Blossom Farm. It is truly a place of beauty and wonder.
Nature Mandalas Created During the Teen Retreat at Pumpkin Blossom Farm in Warner, NH
The little girl peered up at me with teddy bear eyes as she asked her question. She was just a few years older than my daughter was when see used to boldly inquire, “Who are you?” while gazing her deep blue eyes into mine.
The question from the little girl this morning made me smile. Wide and free. “I’m the yoga teacher,” I told her.
“Am I taking yoga? I hope I am.”
“I want to take yoga,” the boy beside her chimed in.
“What’s your name?” Another child joined in the conversation.
I resisted the impulse to gather the group of preschoolers ready to go outside for their recess, turn on some Kira Willey, and lead their eager bodies in an impromptu yoga class. Their faces were irresistibly sunny as though they had no idea it was raining just outside the windows. Instead, I gathered the registration forms together out of the envelope I had hung on the bulletin board just last week, and smiled my way home.
It was my third errand of the morning. Before collecting the registration forms from the two Montessori schools, I had dropped off a bag at the high school. A post-it labeled it for the writing teacher, but it was for one of her students. A girl very different from those three exuberant young children in the preschool classroom. What a difference a dozen years can make in a life.
She had never said a word, not even in introduction. Perhaps the teacher had overlooked her on purpose because she was shy. But I had seen the shrug of her shoulders and the head bowed a little further towards the table. The head that never looked up in participation for the hour-and-half I was there.
“I see you,” I wanted to whisper in her ear. Not in the tone of a creepy stalker, but with the words of understanding. “I’ve sat in that seat too. Many a time,” I wanted to tell her, but didn’t.
I didn’t because it was not my classroom, and I did not know her story. Sensitive to the fragility of the teenage mind, I kept quiet, like her. But I couldn’t forget about her. Although she was the only one in the classroom that never said a word, to me she was just as important the eager participants who sat around her. Even though she looked like a forgotten island. Or, an island that wanted to be forgotten.
She reminded me of me, but also someone who wasn’t me. I may never know her story. Why she chooses to wrap into herself. But, I ache for what she has lost, already. Perhaps she was once like that little girl with the happy brown eyes who thought nothing of asking a stranger who she was. I’d like to think so, but this also makes me sad.
I don’t know if she’ll read the book I offered her in return for not acknowledging her presence, and for not knowing how to bridge her island for fear of further harm. She may not read even the first word, and that’s okay. I hope she reads the card, though. I think she will. I hope she realizes that someone saw her when she thought she wasn’t seen. Not by the eyes of judgement, but the eyes of understanding. And, I hope that one day she’ll realize she has a beautiful light inside of her that is waiting to be seen.
I wouldn’t necessarily have been able to tell. I mean, she seemed like a typical almost-teenager. A little unfocused. A little unbalanced. A little tired. Okay, maybe she appeared more than a little tired, but it was easy enough to overlook. What kid her age isn’t a little tired…
“Is this the time when we get to sleep?” the girl asked with unmasked enthusiasm as we prepared for savasana.
I think that’s the moment when my heart started to break.
“Her shoulders are all knots. They always are,” declared her mom when she came to pick her up after class had ended. “She’s too stressed out. That’s why she needs yoga. I was so glad when I saw the class in the newsletter. I have a meditation app that she uses to help her get to sleep, but it isn’t enough.”
I looked around at the near-empty room and thought, she can’t be the only one.
I looked at my own daughter. Age fifteen. Just back from ski practice. Before that, a full day of school. Fifteen minutes in between to grab a quick bite of food. I could read her impatience in her restless stance. “Hurry up, mom,” she declared when it was just the two of us. “I have homework to do.”
No wonder the room was empty. My daughter is like most teens in town. Busy. Over-booked. She tends to like her life that way. But, there are nights when she also has trouble sleeping. Not every night, thankfully. There are days when she feels the stress of too much.
I took one more look at the room as I flicked off the lights. It had not been filled with teens eager for balance. Just one girl and my daughter. A twelve-year-old girl who had been nearly ten minutes late because she couldn’t find her mat. I had nearly turned the lights off an hour before. I’m glad I had not. Maybe within the next week another parent will look at her child and say, “You need this. Maybe it will help you. Give it a try.”
Learning to step aside and allow the unfolding of the self is, I have learned, a multilayered process. There is a shedding of the old in all of its preconditioning through past events held largely in the grasp of Fear and the many cloaks it wears. It’s almost funny in its irony. Holding onto the guise of protection only serves to limit the energy of the true self. Who, or what, then are we protecting?
When I started asking the question “How can I serve?” I found I needed to let go of the preconditioned self. And, I also needed to let go of the envisioned path. When I added the words, “Show me the way,” there came with it a relinquishing of conditions. I have found, although others may disagree, that The Secret to life is not to hold a vision so firmly in one’s mind and being so that it manifests into one’s reality, but just the opposite. The Secret to Life, at least one lived through the True Self, is to do the opposite.
The will of the mind, when removed from its throne of power, provides a seat for the soul to flourish into true being.
It’s a terrifying process, this becoming naked from habitual wraps, and the relinquishing of the mighty reign of the mind. There comes a moment, or progression of moments, when one must return to the stage of birth in all its wonderment and vulnerability. What we have hidden within the folds of our donned garments becomes exposed before it is shed as an aspect of the false self it protected.
Just over one year ago, I walked the hills of Ojai, California hoping for, if I am brutally honest with myself, one of those transcendental experiences of mystical enlightenment that many of us read about, but few of us experience. Instead, what I got was the still, soft voice within urging me to embark upon the path of yoga. It wasn’t vague, and it didn’t speak just once. Instead, it crept into my thoughts often throughout the course of several days and nights, always speaking the same words, “enroll in a yoga teacher training program.”
And so I did.
I signed up for my first yoga class more than twenty years ago while I was living in southern Massachusetts and working toward a doctorate degree in molecular biology. The yoga class, I told myself and the instructor, was my outlet. A means to destress the stressed mind. I had no intention, twenty years ago, or even one year ago, of ever teaching yoga, but just practicing it from time to time for a little more balance and peace as I went about my daily life.
The funny thing is, the inner voice, as it always is, was trying to talk to that much younger self who thought she was going to be a geneticist one day. It was not soft, though, but loud. It would wake me from sleep (I was too stubborn to hear it by day), stepping outside of my body to press against my ear before it yelled whispered my name, Alethea!
For Truth.
We don’t truly hear the voice of the true self, though, until we are ready to. And, thankfully, I don’t regret not listening to it those many years ago, because I know I was not ready to hear what it had to say. There was too much learning to do. Too much holding onto before I let go.
Now I find myself sitting on the sofa, with two dogs I never thought I would have as beloved companions bookending me. I am typing away on a computer while my stomach flutters with excitement. Tonight I will be teaching my first yoga class to teens. I am only halfway through my 200 hours of yoga teacher training, yet this is where the asking, How may I serve and Please show me the way has brought me. It feels like home. I can’t tell you what tomorrow will bring, or even what later in the day will bring when I am standing in a room filled with thirteen and fourteen-year-olds. What I can tell you is that it feels like Truth.
The Light Behind the Story 