Before I even had a chance to get used to putting "2022" at the top of my snail mail, 2022 got weird. Ah, that way goes the game. I sure did miss all my fellow students and teachers last week!

The storm

Last week, my home in VA was hit with a storm that gave us a night of sleet and ice followed by 8-10 inches of snow. Being snowed in isn’t terrible. Losing electricity and water for two and a half days is less than ideal, though.

Going without electricity in the winter isn't fun, but I've seen this movie before. That's why I was utterly shocked when I handled this storm and its aftermath so poorly. Thank goodness for the power of yoga. Thank goodness for the toolbox with which I was armed because it made things better. Here's what yoga showed me when the dark came early and the temperature inside my house sat at a balmy 47 degrees.

This is more than movement

Here at Union Yoga, we love movement. When you come to class, you will most definitely have the option to practice asana. We try to balance things out by reminding you of and incorporating other limbs of yoga, but asana is the most visible of the limbs.

I wish I could tell you that during this winter power outage, I rolled out my mat and saluted the sun with such vigor that I radiated heat out to all the beings around me. I did not. I didn’t even unfurl my mat.

When I talked with Rex about this at our blog meeting, I felt embarrassed to admit it. (Not because of any judgment from him, but more because I was admitting that the most stereotypical tool of yoga was not the one I grabbed from the box.) Then I decided if it made me feel embarrassed, I ought to tell you about it so that if you ever get hit with life, you will not feel alone about the need to pass on the asana sometimes.

As Rex was quick to point out, I was not in a good position to engage in physical practice during this storm. Our survival food stock had to be rationed, and the energy I did have needed to go elsewhere. I've told you so many times that yoga isn't only asana. Last week, I considered that some more.

Your breath has your back

Your respiratory apparatus literally has your back. (Nerd alert: Leslie Kaminoff and Amy Matthews talk about this in glimmering detail in Yoga Anatomy.)

Besides harnessing the power of breath to facilitate moving... and living, your breath is also the key to down-cycling a distressed nervous system. During the outage, I dealt with waves of anxiety about just about everything. When will I be able to flush the toilets? Do we have enough fuel to heat the meals? How long will the power be out? How am I going to keep the dog warm? When that happened, I turned to the very tools I've been telling you about on this blog. I turned to square breaths and expanded the depth of my inhalations and the length of my exhalations.

The great thing about turning to your breath is that you have to breathe anyway. You might as well do it in the most efficient and beneficial way possible. No matter where you are or what you're doing, for as long as you are living, there's always the breath.

The story is behind the breath

By harnessing the power of the breath and enabling the conditions for meditation to arise, I had the chance to be still and notice sensations and thought patterns.

When I became still, I recognized that the reason I felt so discombobulated had little to do with a fear of freezing. I realized that the last time I felt this combination of cold, caloric deficiency, and an inability to change my circumstances was at my lowest in my eating disorder recovery. During those days, my body felt the way it was feeling during the storm every day with no end in sight. I am ten years into my recovery journey, and the memory of being wracked by anorexia is so severe that I went right back to that place. Recovery is a long road, friends.

The beauty of yoga is that it gave me the ability to see it, and when I could see what was happening, things were a little less scary for me. I couldn't sit down and have my cup of hot green tea with the sensations like usual, but with a tepid cup in hand, I said, "I see you. You are temporary."

You can go somewhere else

We've discussed being here now through yoga. In intense circumstances, we have an opportunity to be connected to all of it and to let the present swirl around us. Instead of rejecting this external static, we can use it to take us deeper into our practice. If you find your center in the here and now long enough, sometimes you go somewhere else in a non-daydreaming way.

I’m talking about pratyahara (turning inward), the fifth limb of yoga. (We'll talk about what pratyahara is and how you might recognize it in an upcoming post soon.) This isn't just something for the sadhus, either. You've probably caught glimpses of this limb in your life and practice, but you may not have recognized it.

Let's just say, it was cold in my house and I was hungry. I was aware of it. I still felt the cold and hunger, but I felt it less. I remained in the room in the present, but I was letting it be. Pratyahara is such a powerful limb.

Remember compassion

Compassion isn’t a limb, but it is a cornerstone. I had the luxury of losing power with a roof still over my head, plenty of warm clothing, and sufficient supplies to carry me through.

There are human beings, perhaps even some of our readers, who do not have enough food, clothing, and warmth to find anything close to comfort. Nothing I experienced can even touch what that’s like, so there’s no use in glorifying or comparing sufferings. What last week did was remind me how deep cold and hunger felt so that I can make choices to keep others from experiencing the same thing.

You don't have to go out of your way to find suffering, but when you encounter it (and we all do to some degree in our lives), you can use it. You can harness it so that you can reduce the suffering of others. If that's not powerful stuff, then I don't know what is.

We're not above life. We're in it.

When you commit to practicing yoga, you'll start to turn to it in all sorts of circumstances. Engage in your practice whenever you can. When things are going well, you’re building your skillsets. When things take a turn, you’ll have something to help you get to the other side of the challenge. The fortitude and awareness we gain from yoga is a form of preparedness.

Stay safe. Stay warm. Share love. It’s so good to be here now, my friends.