Sunshine, Hummingbirds, And Me - In a wobbly Tree Pose

I'm continuing with the musings/ thoughts/ experiences I feel like writing about; delving in deeper, into calmer waters; finding purpose in the practice.

This blog post is from my experience practicing Yoga outside; maybe it can inspire you too :)

There's a particular kind of morning where the light hasn't fully committed to being daylight yet — it's still soft, a little unsure of itself, spilling gold across the front yard like it's testing the waters before the neighborhood notices. My front yard's tiny, honestly — filled with plants and pots, barely any bare ground left over for a mat — but that's never once stopped me.

This is the hour to unroll it right there anyway, on whatever patch of grass you've got, before the world has properly woken up and started judging anyone.

Indoors, yoga can sometimes feel like a performance review — dishes piled in the sink, laundry waiting to be folded, emails quietly multiplying somewhere in the back of your mind, the whole house humming with things not yet done.

Outside, at 6:30 a.m., there is no jury. 

Just some birds, mid-conversation about nothing in particular, hopping in and out of the hedge like they're running small errands nobody asked them to do. A goldfinch says something opinionated from a wire. A hummingbird flutters on. You'll never know what was said, and that's ok.

Spread your mat and place a small cushion to sit on. Start in a simple seat. Feel the ground — actual ground, with actual texture, not the eternally flat gym floor — slightly uneven under you, like the earth has opinions about how you sit. Close your eyes. There's a breeze doing its rounds, unhurried, brushing past like it has nowhere urgent to be either. It doesn't care about your flexibility. It just moves through, cools the back of your neck, and moves on, the way all good visitors should.

Breathe — just an ordinary breath, in and out, except this time you're actually paying attention to it. Notice how the inhale seems to arrive from somewhere the exhale wasn't expecting.

There's a small, old idea in Yoga that breath — Prana — is the thread connecting body and mind, the current that switches the body's lights on one room at a time.

You can almost feel it moving as you sit there: a faint hum along the spine, a small brightening behind the eyes, like something in you that's been asleep is slowly stretching too.

Now let the body join in. Roll the shoulders back, a few slow circles, and feel the small clicks and releases like a house waking up after a long winter. Rise into a gentle Sun Salutation — reach up, fold forward, feel the blood rush pleasantly to your head as the world goes upside-down for a moment, then step back into a low lunge, front thigh warming, back leg waking up one muscle at a time, like it's remembering it exists.

Move into downward dog and feel the stretch travel the whole back line of you — calves, hamstrings, the low back exhaling into it, shoulders spreading wide like wings you forgot you had. Come down into cobra or a gentle backbend, chest lifting toward that testing-the-waters light, heart opening a little wider than it usually allows before nine a.m. Breathe consciously through it, fully awake now. Repeat the whole sequence the second time.

Sit back into a seated twist and feel the spine wring itself out, vertebra by vertebra, a small internal ahh with each turn. Finish in a wide-legged forward fold, letting the head hang, the neck finally off duty, gravity doing all the work for once.

Somewhere behind you, sunlight is doing that thing where it turns dew into tiny, ridiculous diamonds on the grass, as if trying just a little too hard to be beautiful. Let it. And, look closer at the flowerbed by the mailbox — you'll notice the marigolds haven't fully opened yet, still curled up shy and half-asleep, taking their own sweet time about it, entirely unbothered by your schedule or theirs.

You don't have to compete with the sunrise, or the flowers, or anyone.

You're allowed to just be a person, wobbling gently in a Tree pose, half-illuminated, finding your deep roots, and completely fine falling out and moving back in to the pose.

There's no rush here. No one's timing your transitions. No one's comparing your tree pose to their tree pose — mostly because the only other creature around is a squirrel, and squirrels have zero interest in your alignment.

This is the whole appeal: an hour where nobody's impressed, nobody's judging, and the only applause is a light rustle of leaves that would've happened whether or not you showed up.

Eventually you'll lie down — Shavasana, the pose of doing genuinely nothing — and the grass will be slightly damp, and a bird will fly low overhead like it's checking on you, and the breeze will keep going about its unbothered business, and somewhere close by a marigold will have opened just a little more than it had ten minutes ago, entirely without your help.

This, if I'm honest, is why I actually practice. Not my weight. Not my aging bones, creaking a little more each year like old floorboards. Not the version of me that has a job title and a to-do list and an external identity to keep up.

Underneath all of that, there's a quieter self  I'm trying to reach — the one that doesn't age or achieve or perform, the one that, on a good morning, feels like it could soar with angels.

The mat is just the doorway. The dishes and laundry can wait a little longer.

Some mornings you touch that quieter self for just a second, and some mornings you don't, and either way, you'll think: this is nice. Not enlightenment. Just nice. Which, some mornings, turns out to be exactly enough.

So — tomorrow, after the early morning coffee, before the emails, before you've fully decided to be a functioning adult — take the mat outside. Give yourself the gift of 20 minutes of Grace. Front yard, back yard, a balcony, a strip of grass by the driveway — whatever patch you've got is enough.

Let the birds keep doing their small errands around you.

Let the breeze do its rounds. Let the sunshine envelop you in soft drapes.

Let the flowers take their time opening, same as you.