“Then I reflected that all things happen, happen to one, precisely now. Century follows century, and things happen only in the present. There are countless men in the air, on land and at sea, and all that really happens happens to me.” – Jorge Luis Borges, “The Garden of Forking Paths”

First, let me apologize for the lack of posts recently. This semester has been especially difficult.

This semester, I signed up for a yoga class with the university. Unlike my other classes, it does not have weekly assignments or stress associated with it. Instead, it works as a destresser.

I took a yoga class for an elective in high school and even then I was somewhat wary of taking it. I was well aware that it could help take some weight off shoulders at the end of each week, but I was also extremely aware of its increasingly popular status in society. I was afraid that my class would be full of people who were taking it simply because it is fashionable in some way, but maybe because it is offered at the university and not at a studio, it does not seem to be.

My instructor especially emphasizes the breath. He says that each movement should by synchronized our inhales and exhales, something that I haven’t perfected quite yet. Quite often, I am too intent on not falling out of poses or doing them correctly to focus on my breathing. Every once in a while, he asks if any of us have stopped breathing during the current pose, a sign that we might be pushing our bodies past our limit. My honest answer, which I don’t say out loud, is that I hadn’t noticed.

The one pose during which I am very cognizant of my breath is shavasana, or “corpse pose.” Physically, it is the easiest pose as it consists of laying on your spine with your arms nestled against your sides and your eyes closed. Some people find it the most difficult as thoughts have a tendency to take over. Ideally, in this pose, one should become grounded in their body, in their breath, in their existence and nothing else.

At the end of my first yoga class, we lay like this for a few minutes and I was very aware of my blood. I felt it pulsing in my arm and I spent the time idly imagining it running its course through my body, an image, which I realize now, is perhaps slightly disturbing. But at that time, I was amazed at my heart’s ability to send the substance throughout my body and at it changing and changelessness. That is, cells die and are reborn, but are swept along in the same current of life. At that point, my blood, my body was different than it was a moment, a day, a year before that. But it was the same.

In this present moment, I am drinking blueberry green tea, sitting on my bed, listening to the Pentatonix radio on Pandora, and typing this. I am not aware of my veins right now, but I am aware of the slight cramp in my fingers and the feeling of the keys on my fingers, which are pressing the keys out of memory. I know that when I move onto other things later today, this moment may or may not matter. Because I will be in a different present. I will have different, but the same blood in my veins.