Last night we held a yoga class at the school that I teach at. An instructor came in to lead us, the teachers. Our instructor normally works with adults of all sorts, doing hatha, prenatal, etc. However, we managed to book the class in the yoga studio at the same time that the older residential boys would be there to do their yoga class (usually by a video).
I work at a school for kids with autism, and if you’ve never met someone with pretty severe autism before, they aren’t always the quietest, most zen-like folk. This instructor, of course, had never taught classes to kids and had definitely never taught classes to kids with autism. Regardless, she started class right up and started moving through the postures and the breath. I noticed the boys following along the best that they could, trying to figure out what she was doing and trying to balance themselves like her. They all did an amazing job, and although it was a very comical situation listening to at least five people slap their hands together when she put her palms together at heart center, I don’t think I’ve ever smiled more during a yoga class just looking around at the boys trying to get into eagle pose.
When we settled down into shavasana and started calming our breath, the instructor asked us to go into our “happy place,” to go out of the room and into somewhere that makes us happy and calm. I realized then that despite that room being perhaps the least calm shavasana in which I’d ever been, that right there was in fact my happy place for that moment. I didn’t need to imagine going anywhere. I was already there.