When I arrived at yoga the other day I saw her sitting on her mat at the front of the room.

She was young, too young, and maybe that’s where my irritation began.

Or maybe it was because she was far too skinny and I prefer a yoga teacher with a little more meat on her bones, someone who is a bit more plump with life + age. Even her voice irritated me (a bit too California) and as we stretched, I wondered if her features were too big for her otherwise pretty face. (I know, grumpy, grumpy thoughts) These harsh judgements ran through my mind like ticker tape until she suggested we sing, to repeat after her, a prayer in Sanskrit.

And this is when I woke up.

Her singing voice was nothing like her speaking voice. It was pitch perfect, so beautiful, that all of us opened our eyes and watched her. Her eyes were closed in concentration + her hands were folded into prayer at her heart. None of us repeated the words, not wanting to interrupt the perfection of her song. We were rapt.

In one of the recordings I have of Eckhart Tolle, he is asked how you drop a certain way of thinking or change a belief, and he responded, “You just drop it. Like you would a bag of groceries. You just let it go.”

And so I did.

And when she said (during a thigh-burning squat pose) “Feel the heat. That’s where the transformation happens…”
I believed her.