The Sunday morning sun pours through wide-paned windows, illuminating stained glass charms hanging from the high ceiling. Congregants greet friends as they settle into the space. Reverberating off of the hard-wood floors, hymnal music floats through speakers and absorbs into the bodies that fill the room. Sitting with legs crossed, hands on knees and backs erect, we await our leader.
Carolyn enters the room, warmly welcomes everyone and invites us to stand. All arms rise to the sky and feet stand firmly on the earth in a cleansing sun salutation. I take a deep breath, filling every cavity of my body, and exhale loudly with the group into a gutteral “Omm.” My Sunday morning worship has begun.
For Christians, Sunday is the day for formal worship with a congregation, and it has traditionally been the day for repose, reflection and family time. In my early life, my family attended church regularly. Even as a child, I enjoyed feeling that I was in the presence of something spiritual. Seeing the hushed people around me brought to mind deep contemplation. After the ceremony, along with a whole group of family friends, we would feast on doughnuts and orange juice in the congregation hall.
As I got older and busier, we drifted away from our church-going. It was not until I started practicing yoga side-by-side with my parents and friends that I experienced that same reassuring feeling of a ritual to re-center and reconnect with others after a long disjointed week.
In the sun-washed studio, Carolyn speaks a few words, perhaps reads an excerpt from a poem and leads us as a group into the rhythmic flow of our Vinyasa practice. With head on the ground between his hands, my father tries repeatedly to kick up into a handstand. Carolyn runs over from across the room, and speaks with urgency in her voice, “Stand on your head, or there will never be world peace.” Everyone in the room smiles, and I inwardly thank her for her genuine belief that change starts with personal victories.
In my experience, church is not only about spiritual cleansing-it is very much tied to socializing with the community. It is a place where friendships are made, dates are planned and gossip is shared. The ritual encompasses the post-ceremonial activities as much as the service itself. After class, when ladies chat while rolling up their yoga mats and practitioners drink green tea from hand-made cups, I cannot help but remember the doughnuts and juice. And in a certain class, when the instructor invited us to meet someone we did not know, I could not help but think of the ceremonial meet-and-greet rite of, “Peace be with you.”
As I once looked forward to dressing up in new shoes for church, I now enjoy the prospect of a good yoga class. We sweat, pant, shake under the strain of our own weight and leave the incense-infused room vibrating with energy. Endorphins run through my body, giving me a physical high-I am rejuvenated.
Yoga is exercise. However, the mindless, boring nature of “working out” is absent from this practice that brightens the rest of my day. Sweating with loved ones and afterward discussing new inversions over breakfast-this is the best way to wrap up a weekend and hail the new week.
I have often wondered what drove people to attend church every single Sunday. As my family’s attendance has fizzled out over the years, save for Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, it was simply not what moved us.
Yet through yoga have we found a similarly welcoming community and a means to physical and mental well-being. Even when I am at school, another yoga studio serves to help me toward my Sunday morning peace. And though my family may not be present in body, I make them present through the shared practice of what led me to that room on that morning.
