Control

When I was taking the motorcycle safety course, my riding coach told me: "Remember, you are in control of the bike." Up to that point, I did not truly believe that I was in control. Instead I felt like it was me versus the bike, and I sure hoped that I would win. But this was a machine, not a bull, and I was a driver, not a rider.

There are many things in life that are beyond control, but there are some things within control. I'm not in control of the weather or the other drivers, but I am in control of the gas and the brake. I'm not in control of who comes into my yoga class, but I am (should be?) in control of which poses I instruct.

This week I taught a class that got away from me. It's a class that I don't plan out ahead of time, and as the class unfolded, I made some choices that seemed strange to me, I couldn't figure out how we had gotten into the sequence we got into, and I kept wishing that the hour would hurry up and be over. How does this happen? After teaching hundreds of classes, how is it that I can feel so helpless to bring a class back to the good sequences that I've used so many times? And if I'm not in control, who is? It was as if something inside me was rejecting the tried-and-true sequences, but without offering another idea for what to do.

The next class I taught went fine. Great, even.