By Angelica Recierdo, inside columnist

The first one of the day is always a little weak. The floorboards under your mat creak like your knees as they straighten to shoot your pelvis into the sky. “Pedal out your feet,” the instructor says. In the gap between your heels and the mat is every worry or concern from that day. You can and will conquer that gap. Blood flows to your peripheries as your palms press down, claiming the earth. Your downward dog goes from timid and hunched to a tower of strength with your heart at the crown. In the quiet of this studio you are alive. This is the only place you can go and count your breaths and feel the quality of your heartbeat to the rhythm of a soft, crooning playlist. There are no expectations here. The world can stop, if only for an hour.

There’s something about losing yourself in the middle of a stretch, the tension of muscle melting away at just the right breath. They always tell you to bend a bit more, sit a little deeper, and that’s all you have to carry right now. I like the discipline of yoga, how strength builds throughout the class and so by the end your arms and legs are unshakable pillars during warrior pose. Yoga makes us face what our bodies can and cannot do. Feel pride beaming from yourself at the endurance of your spinal column during a back bend, and then relief when the pose collapses and you can massage your spine against the buffering mat. Yoga challenges and then heals. When every nerve is charged and your breaths topple on one another and you just cannot keep a pose, take comfort in knowing the final resting pose, savasana, awaits. The same sequence could be applied to any challenge in life, knowing that this is a moment in your life and this moment is not your life.

On the floor, we are still and steady. We are our best here. Out there, we jostle shoulders on crowded streets and keep away from what is not ours. In the studio, we bow our heads and thank each other for sharing the practice today. How lovely it is to thank someone for being present and participating with us. How can one not be uplifted by poses with names like “sun salutation” and “happy baby?” There is both solitude and a togetherness that meets on themat that is difficult to find elsewhere. We are the masters of our space, mind, bodyand time.

Photo courtesy Andreas Ivarsson, Creative Commons