Yesterday I drove to yoga class in Middleburg, Virginia. It was a beautiful fall day.  Along the way, I noticed that nothing had changed.  Sixty years ago, the road, the open country-side, the cows in the pond, the birds heading south for the winter were all there, just like in 1948 when driving along in my father's Nash Rambler. 

 

The trip yesterday took me back.  And then I arrived at the yoga studio.  It was on the third floor of the Community Center where I had once taken dance classes, the same space, the same kind of day some forty years ago when I was thirty-something. The class then was all about "the core" based on the then famous Martha Graham technique, the process of focusing on the central part of the body, the torso,  the life force. 

 

And as I settled down on my mat to begin the yoga class, I was transported back in time yet again, back to where memory of past and consciousness of present merge.  The class proceeded.  My instructor, Mary, repeated "Focus on your center, listen to  your body, listen to your breath."  I did. And a young woman who was on her mat next to me, did as well.  I flowed into the space as we went through a range of poses.  And then a little boy came into the class, a son looking for his mother to attend a soccer game with him. Back to reality.  She promptly gathered up her mat and left the room.  I stayed to finish class, to remember my core once again. 

 

I was struck by the fact that, depending on where we are in life, our cores are different yet connect to what we know and love and remember. 

 

Let's spend time looking deeply into our core; Into the world around us and the world within.  I did yesterday while taking a trip to a yoga class.