My Yoga Mat

(originally published at https://holyyoga.net/blog)


Psalm 48:9  Within your temple, O God, we meditate on your unfailing love.

My yoga mat is a traveling sacred space.  Sometimes it is placed on the hardwood floor of the YMCA, sometimes the striped carpet of my den, sometimes the Earth, beneath a canopy of leaves.  My yoga mat is the place I go to breathe deeply and remind myself,  “I’m still alive.”  It’s the place I connect with God.

On my mat, I push my body to do things I’m quite sure I’m not able to do.  It’s where I learn to accept that enough is simply enough.  My mat tells me about who I am, and who I am becoming.  On that mat, He reconciles the fragmented parts of me:

My mind that races,

and He says, “Be still.”  

My body that says, “I can’t.”  

He says, “Try--and know my strength.”  

My heart lies broken,

and He says, “Accept that you are loved.”

My yoga mat provides me with a space for healing--body, soul, and spirit--to wherever I carry it.  It becomes my temple, my church, my altar--the place where I lay bare all of myself, before my God who accepts me, just as I am.  

Incomplete,

yet growing.

Broken,

but being made whole.

Blossoming,

but not yet in full bloom.  

On my mat, He teaches me His LOVE.