Posts In: affirmations

by Laura McCorry

Time has started to unravel a bit for me. As I move further into this pregnancy, I’m falling out of routine, becoming less attached to the segmented hours of the day. This is probably a good thing. I wake when I’m finished sleeping (some days at 8:30, some days at 6am), I eat when I’m hungry (always, always snacks before bed), and I’ve found myself baking banana bread muffins at 10:30 at night.

In Walking on Water, Madeleine L’Engle writes about two different conceptions of time, “Kairos. Real time. God’s time. That time which breaks through chronos with a shock of joy, that time we do not recognize while we are experiencing it, but only afterwards, because kairos has nothing to do with chronological time. In kairos, we are completely unself-conscious and yet paradoxically far more real than we can ever be when we are constantly checking our watches for chronological time.”

The birth of a child is a moment like this, always outside of time. But you are also ushered into kairos at the death of a loved one. (I remember being shocked when I realized that practicing savasana, or final relaxation, in yoga is also a way of practicing death. It’s translation is corpse pose, after all.)

How can you practice both life and death with grace? I think the word that matters most is practice (meditation). Or perhaps grace. For me, moving into kairos is the same as practicing meditation. You allow yourself to move outside time, into space that is neither here nor there, you are not awake or asleep, you simply ARE.

The paradox of life is that we need both kairos and chronos. I need the immediate, tactile chronos, the skin, muscle, and bone of my hands dusted in flour, forming a dough, placing it in the oven, setting a timer (because humans being can move outside time, but yeast, water, and flour cannot if they are to become bread.) And I need those moments of timelessness, of seeing the moment arrive and stepping into it whole-heartedly, whole-bodily: when my toddler bumps her head and needs to be held RIGHT NOW, so I drop everything and cradle her in my arms.

I hope you are gifted the experience of time in all its splendored variation. The moments that are breath-giving and the moments that take your breath away. Moments of kairos when you allow yourself to be fully present; when you take in whatever sensation, thought, or emotion is most present, but practice not letting it define you. And when you need it most, I hope you find those life-affirming moments of chronos, of baking late at night, a solid grounding in time as we most often know it.

We hope to help you find that Kairos time on your mat at Yoga One, click here to view our schedule.

Laura McCorry
Contributing Writer

Yoga and Laura had an on-again-off-again relationship from 2004 until 2009 when they decided to move in together and there’s been no looking back since. Passionate about both yoga and writing, Laura loves to introduce others to the joys and benefits of yoga and healthy living.

Contact: laura(AT)yogaonesandiego(DOT)com

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guest post by Yoga One student, Jill Zubec

Trying to maintain control in this life is a bit like trying to maintain control on a roller coaster. The ride has its own logic and is going to go its own way, regardless of how tightly you grip the bar. There is a thrill and a power in simply surrendering to the ride and fully feeling the ups and downs of it, letting the curves take you rather than fighting them.

When you fight the ride, resisting what’s happening at every turn, your whole being becomes tense and anxiety is your close companion. When you go with the ride, accepting what you cannot control, freedom and joy will inevitably arise.

As with so many seemingly simple things in life, it is not always easy to let go, even of the things we know we can’t control. Most of us feel a great discomfort with the givens of this life, one of which is the fact that much of the time we have no control over what happens. Sometimes this awareness comes only when we have a stark encounter with this fact, and all our attempts to be in control are revealed to be unnecessary burdens.

We can also cultivate this awareness in ourselves gently, by simply making surrender a daily practice. At the end of our meditation, we might bow, saying, “I surrender to this life.” This simple mantra can be repeated as necessary throughout the day, when we find ourselves metaphorically gripping the safety bar.

We can give in to our fear and anxiety, or we can surrender to this great mystery with courage. When we see people on a roller coaster, we see that there are those with their faces tight with fear and then there are those that smile broadly, with their hands in the air, carried through the ride on a wave of freedom and joy. This powerful image reminds us that often the only control we have is choosing how we are going to respond to the ride.