Om...again

There was a palpable kind of tension at yoga this morning. The studio was stuffy, so we opened the windows; a wonderful breeze was blowing through, but people seemed in various stages of concern regarding the approaching storm. I just don't feel real worried about it but am certainly not judging others' qualms.Focus on our movement and breath made for a rigorous, distracting hour, but as we settled into sivasana and the rain started up, you could feel peoples' awareness of the outside permeate the space we'd created inside. Up we sat for a final inhale, exhale and Om, and I found myself thinking about the communal intonation: how we all had different thoughts, contexts, feelings, emotions and so forth coming into class and how we'd all venture out into different -possibly vastly so- days but for that one moment, everything coalesced into one, strong, primal sounding. As fast as it started, it ended; we bowed, and each woman headed her own way. In the same way that our lives are never the same on a daily-weekly-monthly basis, that one chant of Om is always different too: sometimes it's a beautiful sync; other times it's a cacophony of dissonant voices. And just as yoga is a lesson in acceptance of so many things, so too is that Om.