permission to play

I recently traveled down to Virginia with my partner, Hendry, to visit his older sister. His sister had a little girl a few years ago. She’s always held a special piece of my heart because her Nepali name is Yogeswari (the name of one of my Jivamukti yoga teachers) and she was born while I was in Costa Rica at teacher training. Unfortunately, throughout this trip Yogeswari was going through a “stranger danger” phase and constantly ran away and hid from me. 

One day his sister had friends and their kids over the house. One kid, Sid, was just a bit older than Yogeswari. But unlike her, Sid loved me and followed me around all day. In the afternoon, I sat down in the playroom and began playing legos and cars with him. He was completely absorbed in what we were doing in that very moment, seemingly unbothered by any past or future events.

Several times, I tried to discreetly check my phone or even try move my spot in the room so I could converse with the adults next door. But each time I turned my attention away from him and our play, Sid would put his hand on my thigh and look at me with puppy-dog eyes before saying ‘play’ or pointing to one of his toys. 

I was enthralled by his pure joy. He reveled in my unwavering attention and extended play time.

This month we’ve been exploring the word Atha, which is the very first word in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra. Atha means now, now as in ‘the present moment’, the very moment at hand. As children, we have the innate ability to connect with, tap into, to be with the present moment. But as we become older and responsibilities mount, it becomes harder and harder. Many of us are so caught up in being productive and responsible that we often feel as if we don’t have permission to fully absorb ourselves in something simply because it brings us joy.

Our experience of time from moment to moment is non-linear. For example, a one minute plank feels very different from one minute of watching Netflix. Like this, you may remember time feeling much slower when you were a child. 5 minutes of timeout, 3 months of summer vacation, a whole year…they were all so long. Then we got older and now it feels like the years speed by. One contributor to this phenomena is our tendency to spend most of our time rushing from task to task and very little time fully present.

The yoga practices invite us to practice being fully absorbed in what we’re doing- whether it’s contorting our body into a pretzel or sitting in stillness. Spiritual exploration isn’t always heavy and hard. It is also meant to uplift us and bring us joy. The yoga practices, if we allow them, can help us tune back into our natural child-like state, one of pure absorption and play.