Joy

I taught my first yoga class for kids last week. The class was complete with animal noises (mooing and meowing through cat and cow and ruff-ruffing in downward dog), for my 6 year-old niece and 3 year-old nephew.

In flowing from standing back bend to forward fold, I said "Imagine that we are a book." "Open the book!" (standing back bend), "Close the book!" (forward fold).

This really tickled my 3 year old nephew - he screamed out - "I like that one!" and ran over to my mat and threw his arms around my legs, giving me a huge joyous hug, before running back to his mat and continuing the flow. As we were swan diving into the second forward fold, he ran over and gave me a second hug, with equal power and joy to the first hug. His powerful, genuine, and spontaneous joy really struck me.

And so, this week, here's to feeling and showing a spontaneous joy when we have discovered a new flow in class, or a new flow in life.

From Karoun Yoga Newsletter #10 on 8/10/2009