It was a cry-in-savasana kind of practice this morning at yoga. But before my mom calls and reminds me that my pity party has run its course (thanks, Mom), I would like to point out that for the first time in too long the world ceased to revolve around me for a few brief minutes and I cried for someone else. A lot of someone elses, I guess.

You see, I had delightful dinner last night with some new friends over which intense conversations about life and love and injustice and possibility flowed freely. We talked school food and community gardens and sex trafficking and animal abuse and murder and a whole lot of heavy shit I haven’t delved into since college. I stayed up until 3 o’clock in the morning just trying to figure out what to do next. Because once you hear some of the things I heard, you don’t really have a choice but to do something. You know?

So this morning I’m sliding down the euphoric slope into savasana after 90 glorious minutes of hot vinyasa when this song (please ignore the incredible photo montage) clicks on. I love this song. Appropriately enough, it makes me feel at peace. This morning, though, I just felt sad. I felt so, so sad for… I don’t know, everyone who doesn’t know what peace is.

I am not even about to get into a religious debate on this blog, but I am comfortable enough saying that I do not know who god is (please don’t ask me if I’ve been “saved”; I haven’t) and have never made an effort to find out (though surrendering to a higher power is an important part of yoga and something I’ve been working on). But I’ll be damned if I didn’t get the feeling that I got called the fuck out in class this morning. It was like someone (who? me? God?) threw me down on that studio floor and screamed, “Look at yourself. Look at who you are and what you have. Look at all you could contribute and everything you haven’t. Now do something. Do anything.”

Quite the kick in the pants if you ask me. I will say that despite a lot of recent big changes, my life has felt surprisingly stagnant the past couple years. I’m ready to get moving again.

So here’s a final thought that my teacher touched on this morning… In yoga, when you’re holding a pose that’s physically uncomfortable the body’s innate response is to tighten up. With breath, you can guide the body into release so that you’re open to push farther and deeper. After a while, though, discomfort will set in again and, as expected, the body will tighten its grip. We tighten up to stop the physical discomfort but all this succeeds in doing is preventing us from stretching beyond what we thought were our limits. As it turns out, we can go so much farther and do much more. As is the case on the mat, there are lots of moments of discomfort in life, too, and if we seize up and stand still we’ll miss out on opportunities to push ourselves beyond our limits. If you fight your body, your body will fight back. And, as I’m learning, if you fight your life, life will fight back too. Release and go farther. You are limitless.