Breathing fast and slow

The poet Galway Kinnell writes the following poem and calls it Prayer : Whatever happens. Whatever what is is is what I want. Only that. But that. I call that a life's work, which, I suppose, is close enough to what prayer is. It is a mantra worthy of repetition for what we come up against, what we experience and endure, and for that matter, what endures. Whatever what is is .... On the cover of the Los Angeles Times Tuesday morning was a picture of a small group of women in the Philippines walking, according to the caption, in a religious procession--arms laden with religious icons--against a background of devastation left in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan that wracked much of the Philippines on November 8. It is the sort of photograph that looks like a painting, and the women look more like warriors than like those suddenly rendered homeless by natural disaster. It is a remarkable photograph, worth more than its share of a thousand words. I found myself going back to it many...

As I got to the top of the stairs the other morning for practice, there, lying just beyond the reach of the door to the yoga studio, was a homeless person rolled up in a blanket too thin for November's early morning air and fast asleep. In the years that I have practiced at this studio, I have, upon occasion, seen other homeless people slumbering near the entrance, their few belongings piled neatly beside them, socks tucked down inside their shoes. Always, I wonder what it is that draws them to this particular entry way. The answer is not so difficult to imagine. At the top of the stairs is a generous landing, buffeted by a short wall on all sides, except, of course, where the stairway leads to it. Here, then, is a small, somewhat hidden sanctuary where a person could sleep undisturbed, or as undisturbed as someone is capable of sleeping when living out on the streets all day. I cannot imagine it. Me, who has a difficult time of it on the rare occasions I have to sleep alone in...

My husband is not a morning person. In fact, he would say that getting up early is for the birds. And, of course, he'd be right. Every bird worth its weight in feathers knows that the early morning is the best time to harvest worms and to sing its ode to the dawn's early light. While I have no interest in competing with the birds for their morning grubs--as long as they leave enough for the garden--I am, nonetheless, one of the flock when it comes to paying tribute to the dawn. According to the latest evidence in sleep research, this penchant for the dawn makes me a "lark," a morning person, someone who feels she is capable of her best work in the morning. Those who burn the candle at the other end of the day are known as "owls" because they, like their nocturnal namesakes, tend to be more productive in the evening. I imagine that if I talked to enough "owls," I would find that, like me, they have a special reverence for their particular time o...