summer silver linings: park yoga.

It is hot, y’all. We’ve had multiple 90-degree days here in Boston this month, and the heat doesn’t seem to be letting up. Add to that the constant, endless, gnawing anxieties of the pandemic and you’ve got a recipe for stress and frustration. I am still healthy, but I’ve been on furlough all summer and no one is too sure when we’ll get to go back to work. It’s exhausting.

I am trying – when I can – to focus on the silver linings, and one of those is helping with the frustration, too: park yoga.

My beloved local studio, The Point, has been offering Zoom classes during the pandemic, but about a month ago they also began small, socially distanced in-person classes in Piers Park, down the hill from my house. I’ve been taking my green mat and walking down there once or twice a week, and I have to say: it is lovely.

There are usually a half-dozen of us there, and we set up our mats in the long grass. Sometimes there’s music; more often it’s the background noise of children and runners and tankers going by in the harbor. (There was some excitement the other night involving a literal wild-goose chase and some very hyped-up kids.) We do sun salutations and lizard poses, stretch out in warrior, try to breathe deeply and let the various stresses fall away, for a little while.

I’ve appreciated the work that goes into Zoom classes, but by May or so I was all screened out. It is so nourishing to be together in person, to see Taylor’s smile or hear Devon’s laugh, to nod at the other students I know by sight. The community matters as much as the poses and stretches. And I am deeply grateful for all of it.

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