Sweet Surrender
All excuses aside, how could you begin to commit to a daily yoga practice?
By Phillip Moffitt
Page:
1
2
3
4
5
6
 Forty-one-year-old Kim Knorr-Tait awakens each morning between 5 and 5:30 a.m. There is no alarm; she just wakes up. The first thing she does is head to the kitchen where she makes herself a small pot of green tea which she carries back into her bedroom, all the while being quiet so as not to disturb her sleeping 12-year-old daughter, Alyssa. She then takes an old couch pillow which she folds in half and sits on in front of a small altar she has constructed in the corner of her bedroom. It's not a fancy altar, just a small table with a white cloth on which she has placed various objects which are meaningful to her: a picture of the Virgin Mary with the Christ child given to her by a Benedictine monk, some mala beads, photos of people she loves, and some rocks and other earth images which connect her to the ground. For the next 20 minutes or so she will sit and read, from the Bhagavad Gita, or from Thomas Merton's New Seeds of Contemplation (W.W. Norton, 1974), or her latest favorite, John O'Donohue's Eternal Echoes (Cliff Street Books, 1999).
After reading she sits there another half-hour in meditation and prayer. She chants "om" in its three distinct syllables—"ahhh...oohhh...mmmm"—as a kind of mantra meditation. The prayer is her own eclectic creation in which she gives thanks and appreciation, seeks to stay present and open, and holds those she loves in light. From a little window in her meditation corner, she soon witnesses the birth of the day, instinctively feeling what the weather will hold—not a small matter because she lives on a farm in Pennsylvania where weather is always a concern. By now it's 7 a.m. and time to wake Alyssa for school. Calm and inspired by her morning practice, she spends the next 45 minutes delighting in being a mom until her daughter runs out to catch the school bus.
After her daughter leaves, Kim goes into her living room and spreads out her yoga mat. Sometimes she will put on some quiet music, either Ravi Shankar or Narada. For the next five to 10 minutes she does pranayama—kapalabhati (breath of fire) and anuloma viloma (a type of alternate nostril breathing). Then she stands at the end of her mat and begins her hatha yoga practice with 10 minutes of Sun Salutations. The standing poses are next, followed by a few balancing ones; if there is still time, she will do some floor work, if not, just Savasana (Corpse Pose). She has to be finished by 8:30 a.m. because she has a business to run.
Next
 
| 
