"Thirty-Three Lessons from a Yoga Retreat" by D'Ann Drennan

1. Everything we do—every dance, every yoga practice, every story, every breath—is an

offering to the divine—the divinity outside and the divine within.

2. The Universe sang itself into being.

3. Aum. A living symbol that carries its energy within.

4. In the beginning, there was vibration.

5. Citta. The heart/mind. Two oxen yoked together do not become one ox.

6. I am yoked to you but I am not you.

7. Throat sits between heart and mind. Vibration is crossing into form.

8. Camellia sinensis. All teas are made from two leaves and a bud. The farmer starts with the

same raw material. It’s the process that makes the tea.

9. Our two leaves made the bud that is our son. Nature or nurture? What process made him the

way he is?

10. Purpose dictates practice.

11. “It might be good but is it good for me?”

12. Tea is fluid. It’s not one style. It’s whatever I’m feeling in the moment.

13. “I couldn’t dance for the longest time after my mother died.” I felt nothing in the moment.

14. 72,000 nadis join at our navel.

15. Quiet the senseless chatter that clutters our imagination.

16. Japa Japa Japa Japa Japa Japa Japa Japa Japa

17. Wild horses. Champing at the bit. Running down random roads. Still the mind. Stable the

horses.

Om So Hum  I am that

Hum saha  that I am

18. Be still and know that I am.

19. In the East, I am born pure. In the West, I am born in sin.

20. My breath is the bridge between my conscious and subconscious mind.

21. Samskara. The sum of my scars.

22. You. Me. Our son. His extra chromosome. The sum of my scars.

23. Earth. Water. Air. Ether. Fire.

24. Trauma is a life experience we can’t digest. Trauma freezes. Fire melts.

25. We are what we digest.

26. If we treat the disease we harm the person, if we treat the person we harm the disease.

27. Healing = Intention + Vibration

28. Screens are dead images. They fester in our frontal brains.

29. What festers in our son’s brain?

30. Agni, fire, is the oldest written Sanskrit word. We used to gaze at fire. Now we scroll screens.

31. The line between yin and yang is a concave parabolic “S” curve, symbolizing the continuous

flow and interconnection between yin and yang.

32. You say you’re a YINO—Yoga in Name Only—but you’re more than that to me. I could not

live with him without you.

33. Dinacharya. Every. Day.

D'Ann Drennan has been a lawyer, a stay-at-home mom, a yoga teacher, earned a black belt, and survived motherhood. She is the Profiles Co-Editor forLiterary Mama, with work published inThe Ilanot Review,Mutha Magazine,Literary Mama,andTexas Co-op Power. She lives in Grandview, Texas—just down the road from a landfill mountain and around the corner from the fighting cocks farm—with her husband and son.