11/08/2026
Whooosh that happened fast!
There's a lot to be said. From where I'm sitting this evening, I can appreciate that the merciless speed with which I had to digest and respond to the shifting situation - from the announcement of the building's sale to new owners at the start of June, to the 28 days we were given to leave the space and leave no trace by 31 July - was a mercy. There wasn't time to overthink or over-plan. There wasn't time even to make for the shore to catch my breath before yielding back into the hissing, tempestuous waters that had risen around me so swiftly. For passage into the underworld.
I am humbled by the journey into fear and grief and the dreaded unknown. Awed by the way the practice rose up to steward me and hold steady my centre, while the situation stripped from me layers of security and identity. What a profound encounter with meeting my attachments, and handing them over with swollen eyes, trembling. My manomaya kosha (emotional and mental body) bloated and raw from the inner fight. With nothing else to do but surrender at Her feet.
From amidst the residue of those final days in the studio, I still continuously find glimmering strands with which to weave bright, billowing candle lanterns. I send them soaring over the ocean of possibilities. Offerings of my gratitude. I press my face into their beauty and breathe in deep when my foothold starts to feel shaky.
Those 10 days of taking down the studio were big. Tearing down with my own hands what I had been in devotion to building felt deeply sacred, however bittersweet. Something opened up within me. Not something new. Something old. A part of me that had had to take a seat right at the back of the classroom of my becoming for many years. It's the part that sees art in everything. That would have run away from home if her parents didn't let her go to Art School. Who reads the poetry scribbled into the balancing act of refracted light in a glass of water, who perceives music in the ebb and flow of shadows and light when the sun and clouds are spiral dancing. Perhaps reading this, that part within you is stirring too, even if just faintly. You know the part I'm talking about. The child-part. The part enraptured by nature, by the wide world turning, the part who moves from and toward wonder.
It was wonder, and the great heart of the Peak community that sustained me through the take down. Not to mention the perfect way it spontaneously unfolded day by day. The best project manager in the world couldn't have planned it better. It was nothing short of miraculous. Day after day I was bombarded by wonder! I could give you a blow-by-blow account of it, but that would extend what is already turning into a super long letter. Ask me about it some time. I'll be so happy to tell you the whole story. Of how on the first day a perfect rainbow took up residence in the sky just in front of the studio. And how in the 9 days that followed, from time to time that rainbow would blink through cloudy skies.
I want to thank every single person who showed up to help. Who so generously gave up their time and energy. Thank you. There is simply no way I could have done it without every single one of your contributions. I'm so deeply grateful. Thankyou to everyone who offered to help. You held my heart and returned it covered in kintsugi.
And then there was the extraordinary way that everything aligned to give us one last chance to gather in the skeleton of the studio to practice yoga - the second last night before our exit date… beneath the full moon… That's poetry homies.
And it felt good. It felt defiant and rebellious. It felt wholesome and reverent - a somatic lovesong to the 72 square meters that had been our home of hot yoga. A ritual blessing of the space for whoever occupies it next. I like to think that all the years of yoga in there have charged it with an irrepressible spirit of goodness that will always be felt by any who enter it.
