by Laura McCorry

The Yoga of Parenthood

I’m a yoga teacher who doesn’t do yoga at home.

At least, not in the way many people understand yoga –
I don’t unroll my mat in the living room while the toddler naps,
even though many days I want to and feel like I should.

My yoga practice doesn’t look the same as it used to,
but neither do I. My body is not the same, nor is my heart.

My yoga is the not-so-silent meditation of watching steam
curl up from the teapot. Three minutes of breathing, of focus
while the little person at my feet repeatedly calls my name.

My yoga is a square of chocolate eaten behind pantry doors
that reminds me to stay present, that this moment will pass,
that I am still myself and sometimes, I don’t have to share.

I feel the fiery embrace of yoga, my muscles holding the pose
of grocery bags over one arm, my child held close in the other.
This is tapas, too. This is the work of daily refinement.

Yoga doesn’t care whether you move through life fast or slow
as long as you are awake for this moment, right now.
We spend forty seconds admiring some clover rooted in earth.

It takes us thirty-five minutes to walk around the block,
my child doesn’t feel time pulling with her thousand fingers.
This, the sacred gift of childhood, to grow rooted in being.

My yoga teaches me to live the way my heart already loves,
and how to choose being over doing, as many times as necessary.