Love with an open palm

by Jessica Girija Jewell

It’s done. Yoga Together Lincoln has closed.

Thank you to everyone who has offered kind words and support. I am fortunate to be part of this community. The kindnesses shown have touched my heart and helped me feel more able to love and be loved.

Deep bow.

Closing the studio kept me plenty busy. The ordinary tasks required to close a space — moving stuff, patching walls, ending services — take time and energy. A few loose ends remain, especially website-tending. Thank you for your patience and understanding as this happens.

I’ve also been doing my best to end things on good terms with everyone involved. As the poet David Whyte writes, “The way we leave can shape our new life to the good or to the bad.”

I realize the decision to close was likely more surprising to the teachers and clients than it was to me, which means it would have been very surprising! If I have failed to fully express my heartfelt appreciation for all you’ve done, please forgive me.

Though I was responsible for the lease and many of the logistics, the studio came to life through you. Thank you to everyone who taught, practiced, attended events, asked questions, stayed after to talk, helped set up, helped clean up, and came back over and over again.

Yoga Together was always an attempt to create an island of sanity, a place to come and remember that human beings are, at their core, kind, creative, and generous.

We had our Ganesha and Lakshmi statues, Saraswati hovering over the door, our plants, and many shared cups of tea. We also had a room that could be cold in the winter and hot in the summer because there was no central air. It was imperfect, but it was alive. And, for a while, we got to gather there.

I feel grief, of course. Not crushing grief every moment, but sometimes, yes. Some days there is a less weighty ache. It often arrives when I pass the building, which I do often because it’s just a mile from my home.

And then the ache passes.

Today, a little over a week from the official close, I feel a contented curiosity as I enter the liminal space, the space of not knowing what’s next. There is a sense that life has asked me to dance, that it is leading and I am following without yet knowing the steps, learning to trust the steady hand at my back.

The Franciscan priest Richard Rohr writes,

“Liminal space is an inner state and sometimes an outer situation where we can begin to think and act in new ways. It is where we are betwixt and between, having left one room or stage of life but not yet entered the next.”

Instead of hurrying into a new space or rushing to create new offerings, I’m leaning into Father Rohr’s teachings on the liminal, the space where genuine newness can begin.

His words encourage me to linger here, even though the anxiety of not knowing what’s next is pushing me to do something.

Yesterday, a friend asked if I could see the closing through my astrology chart and, well, yes, I can. It’s clear.

There is a graha, an energy, in all of our charts whose chief aim is to remove the veils of illusion so we can remember who we are and why we’re here. It’s called Ketu, or for western astrologers, the south node of the Moon. When Ketu is active, we may have experiences that free us from attachments, from forms, roles, and identities that obscure our true Self.

Ketu helps us see where we have mistaken a temporary identity for the eternal Self. Its placement in a chart can show us what we have already tried, what has been found wanting, and what cannot provide the lasting happiness we are seeking. Its motivation is to turn us toward moksha, toward freedom, toward direct recognition of who we are, why we are here, and what we are not.

I entered a Ketu subcycle just as the decision to close the studio was made. In addition, Ketu is currently traveling through the 10th house of my natal astrological chart, the house associated with vocation and visibility. What’s happening with the studio closing is a pretty perfect description of Ketu transiting the 10th house while running its subcycle.

So, I bow to divine timing.

After panicking first.

Om Sri Ketuve Namaha!

As you may know, yoga practice is my anchor and my north star. It allows me to tend to the body, notice how emotions live there, and become aware of the thought patterns churning in the mind. Practice moves us through these layers of experience until, for a moment, we pass beyond them into direct experience of pure loving awareness.

The mantra neti, neti, neti — not this, not this, not this — is perfectly suited to Ketu.

I am not grief.

I am not fear.

I am not the studio keeper.

I am not the story my mind builds when it is trying to protect me from uncertainty.

The physical practice prepares the body to sit, breathe, repeat mantra, and remember. This is not spiritual bypassing. It’s discernment. Yoga practice allows us to feel fully while learning to distinguish what changes — body, emotion, and thought — from the Self, which does not.

Like most of us, I’ve had a fair share of liminal space experience.

I remember when, many years ago, I had just started living with the man I hoped to marry. We were working together in the Sandia Mountains of New Mexico, monitoring hawks during their spring migration.

Just as the season started, he got an offer to monitor peregrine falcons in Zion National Park.

Oof.

That was a very appealing offer for a young, adventurous biologist.

That experience feels similar to this one. At first, there was the shock that I might lose something I cared about. I felt fear, grief, and confusion. But fairly quickly, just like now, I found my way to surrender. Not because I was indifferent. I was not indifferent at all. I told him I would support him regardless of his decision, but I hoped he would stay.

It took him a couple of weeks to decide what to do.

Holding my tongue during that time was one of the more masterful things I’ve done in my life.

While staying quiet, I would visualize holding a tiny version of him in my open palm, giving him the space and freedom to make a choice. Love with an open palm was the mantra.

I’m visualizing something similar now. The work I do is being held in an open palm.

Sure, I have ideas about what I want. I have preferences. I have prayers.

And, at the same time, I know I don’t know what’s best for my soul.

You see, the soul has an agenda. It has an itinerary. Karma is not random. In Jyotish, the planetary periods are cairns on the path, markers placed in time to guide the soul toward liberation. The spiritual discipline is to practice, have faith, and follow.

And the man in the Sandia Mountains, the one I hoped would stay, did stay. We have been together for over 32 years.

Now, I don’t know the full shape of what comes next for my work, for the work of all the teachers who graced the room at Yoga Together, or for the good people who spent time there in practice and community.

But I trust that some new seed is sown within this ending. I don’t know what it will produce, but I am waiting expectantly to see what grows.