Yoga: A Great Way to Make Friends

Today four of us met to practice in the morning at Tlatalolco Park, in El Plaza de las Tres Culturas, Mexico City.
My local friend, Liliana, her cousin Malaina, and Curtis joined me in the Mexican sunshine, at the kiosk where I first practiced with Liliana and Diego nine months ago. (see blog entries from January)

Liliana goes to school, works full time, and lives in the city with her grandmother. We connected here on this visit to the City, and I was finally able to give her a decent, thick, brand new yoga mat. She practices in her small amount of spare time and space. We are yoga sisters. How fortunate then, that her cousin Malaina lives in Portland, so we have made connections which make a circle.

After our practice we had tamales at Cafe Tacuba, where the waitresses were all dressed like nuns for Day of the Dead. The setting is a gorgeous old mansion, converted into a huge, beautiful restaurant.

The friendship circle began with their cousin Diego, who I met on the street while waiting for a free yoga class. He asked me if I would teach at the park because the free class was not meeting for the holidays. My Spanish is like a blanket full of holes, and he was very forward... I almost said "Lo siento.. no....I'm sorry, I can't."  Instead I said " Si..yes, I will meet you later." I thought myself crazy at the time.

Now I am grateful to have a bit of a wild enough nature that I could take the risk of involving myself with a stranger, in a foreign country, on the street, alone and with the most minimal of communication. That is what yoga can do, it becomes a human language which can transcend the many human barriers which divide us and keep us from knowing and trusting one another.

Today in the park, while people strolled around the kiosk, the sun shone on my friends, and we were, indeed, finding and sharing our sacred selves. In a 16th century church yesterday, I saw the word 'sagrado' under a saint, and had to look it up. Sagrado means sacred. Why were we taught, in traditional Christianity, that only God, his Son, and the saints were sacred?  We are each sacred, our bodies and our souls. We have our own sacred hearts which beat the rhythm of our lifeblood. We are Sacred like our sacrum, the center of the body, the place of movement, back aches and nearness to the creation of new life.

As we approach the Day of the Dead,  Dia de los Muertos, it is a fitting time to appreciate our aliveness, even as we honor and remember wistfully those we have loved and lost.

" Make new friends, and keep the old....... one is silver and the other is gold."