Intention: Joy
This afternoon, I went to SweatStar for a hot yoga session taught by my friend Heidi. The name is definitely an apt description of the experience. At least the sweat part.
As you begin your yoga session, you set your intention, what you hope to focus on, during your practice. I’ve been setting the word surrender as my intention. But tonight for some reason, the word joy came to me.
So I’m sweating like a pig, looking at myself in the mirror like they tell us (“eyes on you”), and seeing an expression that seems to say either “air please” or “I will hold this bow pose or die trying.” Setting my intention as joy just didn’t seem congruent with what my face was saying. But I did it. Throughout the session, I kept coming back to that word — joy.
After yoga, I checked my phone. Brendan, one of Chandler’s best friends and bar manager at Board & Brew RSM, had sent me a text. It was the picture of a bottle opener card he’d had made for their upcoming tap takeover featuring Noble Ale Works, Chandler’s favorite brewery. The card read, “The Chandler Tap Annihilation.”
Joy. There it is.
It brings me joy when Chandler is remembered.
Later at home, I was texting back and forth with Chase about some shenanigans his dogs are pulling in the new home they just moved into. Chase is not one bit happy with those pooches right now. Diapers may be in the works. For the dogs, not for Chase. He told me they’d talked to a trainer and were told the dogs needed a tour of the house so they are reassured it’s theirs and feel ownership. I said, “They didn’t pay anything for the house. Do they really need ownership?” His response (I’m going to paraphrase for the sake of discretion): “Mom, I’m also supposed to rub Bear’s butt until he poops and then grill him a steak.”
Joy. There it is again.
Charli and I were laughing so hard at the text exchange about the dogs that one of us ended up on the floor.
It’s so odd that I set my intention for this afternoon’s yoga class as joy even when my face did not agree. It sure found its way into my evening in unexpected ways — a tap takeover dedicated to Chandler and the dilemma of misbehaving canines.
Maybe intention is more potent than I thought.
