It rained gratitude last weekend. Sunday, here in town, it rained and rained and rained. Thick, weighty, rich drops. That seems to happen this time of year – the rain and the condensation in general.
In summer, the wistful warmth in some places and the punishing heat in others turn plans, prior engagements and intentions to vapor.
The autumn brings a revived intensity, a redemption. Everything that has floated about you in a happy, undisciplined haze the three or four months prior starts to accumulate into solid, specific and tangible sentiment before the winter, when it crystallizes sharply into intention, resolution.
Usually this time of year, one of the predominant sentiments is gratitude. For any number of things.
Sunday morning, I went to an earlyish yoga class, taught by one of my favorite instructors. Toward the end of the class, the cooling, or “lunar” phase, he asks us to drink in a deep, cleansing breath and to hold it at the top of our chest.
Hold, hold, hold…for five long seconds or so.
Then release. Let it flow from your nose, but not before you make it drip warmly down your throat like molasses.
The first inhale or two is difficult. Your mind fights you – on all fronts; no, you do not want to hold your breath that long and no, as a young, active person, this should not be that hard!
By the third or fourth breath, you have quieted your fractious mind and it’s quite a bit easier. Actually, you are a rock star - you can hold your breath for that long, “Meh, no problem.” And you can execute the smoothest protracted exhale.
What gifts. To have that breath, to have that moment, to have that ability.
From there, he commands us to lay down for the very final savasana, or corpse pose. It’s not complicated – you lie on your back and be calm, still and quiet, like a corpse. A breathing one.
At this point in class, usually your ears return to their real-world acuity. You start to reemerge from your happy hypnosis and back into life outside that studio. It’s not uncommon at this point to hear cars honk at each other at the traffic light below or to hear a big truck roll past the studio. That’s what many of my classmates and I thought we heard as the class ended.
But it persisted on and on. It was a true torrent that fell insistently on everything outside. The shopkeeper from the boutique next door had left a dress on the mannequin in the patio and it was soaked. Still pretty, but probably ruined.
For the remainder of the day, it misted, sprinkled and rained. However, that rain at the end of yoga demanded our attention. Much as do the sentiments that start to condense all around us this time of year.
Thanksgiving is this week and most of us are somewhat socialized, regardless of political interpretation, to consider all for which are grateful. Some of us laugh at the recitations we had to perform at the school pageant – sing-songy lists of things for which we are thankful.
A few of those items may not have applied – uncomfortably so - or made any sense, but our teachers stuck them in there, because those items completed the simplistic rhyme scheme, which, even then we found condescending. If we gave them any thought at all.
Sometimes, enumerating those items in our minds successfully evokes the gratitude we know we are supposed to feel in abundance. Sometimes, it takes that awkward moment at the Thanksgiving table when it is our turn to add to the holiday blessing/meditation with all of our family and guests listening to make us stop and think.
Other times, perhaps this year, all it takes is being calm, still and quiet, and letting it rain all around us.
Happy Thanksgiving and thank you for reading Martini.