What is - is

​You, just as you are, and your life here, right now, are all there is and all you need to know. You don’t have to do anything special. Mostly, you have to be open to meeting face to face, and even dancing with, the truth that pertains to your life right now. You have to find a way to collect your fractured pieces, examine them, and then accept them as part of who you are. Spiritual practice is about transformation, but it’s also, and more importantly, about working with what is.                
                       - Angel Kyodo Williams –

A quote form the book 'Meditations from the mat by Rolf Gates and Katrina Kenison'.
I love this book and often use it as a theme for the week in my classes. The quote above sat really well with me and in the book is followed by personal experience from the author. This part is sometimes not relevant to me at all and I might either not share it at all or have something more personal to share. Last week it was so personal that I didn't share it in class as it might not be for everyone to hear. The quote however is very relevant and resonates with my truth.

During my years of teaching I got breast cancer. I struggled with it for a long time and even more with the side effects of treatment. Yoga on the mat wasn’t an option for a while. Yoga Nidra was my go to, to stay sane and yet I struggled keeping my focus. I returned to the mat with pain and weakness in the upper body. I fought to regain my strength and mobility. Sometimes it hurt or I was simply unable to do poses and I had to retreat into childs pose. Over time though I began to respect that healing needs time and that I was very grateful to be alive. Eventually I started to befriend my new body, and even to see it as something to admire. I began to focus on what I could do. As this attitude developed, the need to do certain poses, to fight my reality, lessened and gradually disappeared. My strength is back and I am even stronger than before and I gained a lot more knowledge in the other limbs of yoga. I can’t remember when that happened, because when it did, I no longer cared.