Ink and Vein

April is a month of change, it seems.

In 2022, in April, I began teaching yoga at Sweetgrass Therapeutics and offered my first writing workshop, independent of an academic setting.

A couple of months before that, I had resigned from my tenured position as a college professor. As I finished out my semester, April became a month of lasts, as well: the last time participating in the campus assessment day, the last time I would teach on campus, the last time I would be responsible for helping my colleagues input their grades or figure out why the grades in the D2L gradebook weren’t adding up the way they wanted.

I was going to keep teaching as an adjunct professor, but there were still so many “lasts.”

Spring of 2023 was my final semester teaching as an adjunct professor, too, and teaching yoga and the occasional writing workshop became my only teaching roles.

This April, after 3 years of teaching a Tuesday night All-Levels Yoga class for Sweetgrass Therapeutics, along with taking my turn in the rotation of Friday candlelight classes, Sunday yoga in the park, and an attempt at getting interest in Thursday night classes going, it’s time for more change.

My last night teaching at Sweetgrass will be Tuesday, April 29th.

My life has been expanding in so many ways, but my capacity for how many projects and roles I can carry feels as if it has contracted instead. With my role at the Narrow Gauge Book Cooperative, my role in co-running Hyteria Heart Press, my work as an editor, and trying to write and create for myself, as well, there’s just too much for me to carry.

For the past several months, I haven’t felt myself wanting to teach yoga. I was still grateful to see the students, energized and filled up by practice with others, but I felt my teaching practice turning stale. I felt myself not showing up with the same energy and peace that I know drew the regular students to my classes in the first place.

After taking a month off at the winter holidays (the busiest time at the bookstore), I hoped to feel rejuvenated, to work on finding my own practice again, to come back refreshed.

That didn’t happen.

In January, I was not ready to be back on the mat. I was not ready to bring the energy that the class and studio space deserved. After classes, I felt depleted instead of exhilarated.

I reflected and meditated on these feelings, tried to get my daily yoga practice back, tried to do things that would help me find the joy in teaching again… but it just wasn’t coming to me.

After weeks of deliberation, I sat down with Jess to talk with her about leaving the studio. Over coffee, we both cried and expressed gratitude to each other. I truly don’t believe I could have transitioned out of my role as a college professor with the same ease and excitement I did if I hadn’t had another teaching role to step into. “Teacher” has been a part of my identity for so long… and it is an identity that I need to detach from. Yet, I needed that transition from one type of teaching to another so that I could still be grounded in some way as I upended my life and became independent of the structures I was so used to.

Teaching at Sweetgrass brought me into contact with so many people who became dear to me, and allowed me the cherished opportunity to create safe spaces for people to come and breathe and be in their bodies without judgment and without pressure. I will be forever grateful to Jess for that opportunity, and for the space she allowed me to create there.

Transitions don’t always come with relief. Sometimes, endings are grief-filled and difficult even when (especially when?) we know they are the right thing for us.

I’m feeling grief as I prepare to end my time as a teacher at Sweetgrass, yet I know that yoga is a practice I need to reconnect with personally, and that my energy will be better directed elsewhere. I feel myself leaving a community I care for, though I know I am not truly leaving, just transitioning into a different role.

With much gratitude for Jess and for Sweetgrass, I step away and towards other things.