A Ghost In Yoga Class?

True story.

Last Monday night at the clubhouse, the students and I settled in for yoga practice as usual. It was a chilly October night, and I was expecting a student to slip in late, so I left the front door open, but decided to close the inner double doors to keep out the draft. As I pulled the doors closed, a melody began to play inside the clubhouse, sort of like a ring tone. I knew the guards weren’t in their office, so I looked around a bit and found in a back room a Halloween ornament lighting up and chiming the music. I looked for the connection to the door, but saw none, just a button to stop the sound. Cute, I thought, but how in the world did they connect this to the door? The thing didn’t even have a plug. Batteries, I thought – this will probably go off every 15 minutes during practice. Oh well.

The class was in child’s pose and was beginning to breathe ujjayi. I walked around the room saying a few words about settling in and breathing deeply. As I walked back to the front of the room, a student on the end popped up from child’s pose looking startled and certain about something. “Did you touch me?” she asked. I was already several feet from her, “No” I answered. “Are you sure??” she asked, brows furrowed. “Yes I’m sure, what did you feel?” I asked - now my brow was furrowed. “I felt pressure on my back like when you sometimes press down on me in child’s pose, but when I heard your voice it was too far away then I felt the pressing again… “ A collective “hhhmmmm” filled the room.

At that moment, I acknowledged “all things, everywhere, seen and unseen that share our existence.” The chiming ornament with no connection to the door, the gentle adjustment that I didn’t give. The clubhouse is almost 40 years old, and certainly must be filled with all sorts of energy… so to speak. Though startling at first, I’m grateful that it was a peaceful presence that had welcomed us in and helped us to settle. There were no more chimes from the ornament that night and no more adjustments from unseen hands but we won’t soon forget that we were not alone that night.