The class opens quietly. Child's Pose. A block, a blanket, and something that feels a lot like permission — permission to be exactly where you are, right now, exactly as you arrived.
"Come here to meet yourself, perhaps in a new way for the first time today." I say some version of this every week. I mean it every time.
We practice yoga for a lot of reasons. Flexibility. Stress relief. A Tuesday night commitment that pulls us off the couch and into something better. But underneath all of those reasons lives something older and quieter: the desire to be in honest conversation with ourselves. To stop for an hour and actually listen.
Strong Posture, Soft Heart
Somewhere in the middle of class, standing at the front of our mats in Tadasana, I offered an intention. I asked everyone to feel two things at once: grounded feet, tall spine — and then, in the chest, a deliberate softening.
"Hold your strong posture, soft heart. Grounded feet."
It sounds simple. It isn't easy. Most of us have learned to choose between the two — either braced against the world or collapsed into it. Holding ourselves rigid so nothing gets through, or opened so wide we've lost our center entirely.
The practice lives in that space between: a body that is both rooted and open. Strong enough to stand. Soft enough to feel. This, I think, is one of the things yoga is quietly teaching us every single class.
Expression From the Inside Out
During Warrior II, I asked everyone to close their eyes. If they were comfortable doing that. If seeing someone else might be shaping what they allowed themselves to do.
"What would it be like to generate expression from the inside out — instead of letting someone else determine what we look like, sound like, move like, think like?"
This is some of the real work of yoga. Not mastering the shapes. Not looking like the person on the next mat. But learning to feel first — from the inside — and then letting that feeling move outward into form.
So much of daily life runs in the opposite direction. We take our cues from outside: what's expected, what's appropriate, how we're supposed to show up in any given room. Yoga, practiced with intention, asks us to reverse that current. Even briefly. Even in small ways. Even for just one Warrior II on a Tuesday night.
Just Go For It
We were moving into Wild Thing — a big, open backbending twist — when I noticed hesitation in the room. It happens in this posture. It's the moment when people think too hard. When the body is ready and the mind is still writing its pros and cons list.
So I said what I always say:
"Sometimes we have to just go for it. See what happens, and refine as needed. Sitting and thinking for too long just kind of keeps us in that sitting and thinking forever place."
This isn't reckless. It isn't "ignore your body." It's permission to trust what you already know. To stop waiting for perfect conditions before you try the thing you've been circling. The mat is a safe place to practice that. To wobble. To land somewhere unexpected. To try, and refine, and try again.
Wobbles are welcome here, by the way.
Look at What Your Body Can Do
Toward the end of the standing sequence, I found myself watching the room. People were doing things they might not realize are remarkable. A shape held with steadiness. A balance found and re-found. Strength showing up quietly in someone who didn't know it was there.
That's when I said it: "The beautiful, miraculous workings of your body. Look at what your body can do."
Not as praise. Not as performance. Just as an invitation to witness yourself. To notice — without commentary, without judgment — what is already happening inside you. All that quiet intelligence. All that capacity, built through showing up, week after week after week.
That's the payoff. That's what regular practice gives you: access to yourself. The burn you feel in the ankle during Stork Pose? That's not failure. That's weakness leaving your body. And strength, slowly, taking its place.
Embracing the Heart
We moved through a wide-legged standing sequence and came into a posture from Qigong — arms wide and rounded in front of you, as if you were holding a great, invisible tree. It's called Embracing the Heart.
I love this one. Even though your legs are working hard, even though there's real effort in holding the shape, I asked everyone to bring something to their upper body: "Flowy, cool water. Let the lower body be strong and supportive. Let the upper body soften."
We breathed. We let prana — life energy — move in and out through the heart space. Giving. Receiving. Assuring its own free flow.
Let nothing get in the way of that.
Together, We Go Farther
We ended in Shavasana. Palms open to the sky. Surrender everything. Receive your practice. That's what those long, quiet minutes are — not rest, exactly, but reception. Letting the body integrate what it just did, and what it just remembered about itself.
When we came back up to seated, I asked everyone to acknowledge themselves for something. Anything. For showing up. For staying in the room when it got hard. For taking the modification that was actually right for them instead of the one that looked more impressive.
And then I asked them to send that same acknowledgment outward. To the people on the mats beside them.
"These people that show up in support of you, in the very same way that you show up in support of them. Together, we go farther. Faster."
Community is one of the most healing things I know. Not just in the big, abstract sense — but in the small, Tuesday-night sense. In the sense of: you were here, and so was I, and something happened between us that couldn't have happened alone.
We shared a breath in. A full release. And then we went home a little lighter than we came.
That's Sōl. That's what this place is for.
With so much love,
Karen · Sōl Yoga Collective