Time Folds Space

In 1985 I somehow graduated from James Madison University located in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley in the sleepy  little town of Harrisonburg Virginia. Thirty years happen.

This week I am guest teaching a 5 day mysore event for Ashtanga Yoga Club Harrisonburg at The Center Yoga in the Ice House Studios in downtown Harrisonburg.

I am staying with one of the yogis. She is an  anthroplogy professor at JMU.

The tiny town of Harrisonburg Virginia  has become JMU industrial complex! JMU is everywhere. JMU used to just be on campus, and off-campus was the magical place we called the Burg.

I loved college, and loved the sleepy little town of Harrisonburg where my college was located. College for me was  a conundrum of learning cool stuff, track & field, beer, authority issues, learning, The Elbow Room (think cheap beer and New Age bands), theatre, Kate Bush, avoiding studying, Shakespeare, flash cards, coffee, and of course the Burg.

I graduated with a 2.65 GPA. I was an out of control, self absorbed college student. I was young.

Since college, I have traveled to far away lands to study  Ashtanga yoga: India, Russia, Israel, as well as countless cities, towns (and beaches) in the good old USA, and somehow this week in Harrisonburg is more exotic than anywhere I have ever been. This town lives in my bones and it  is taking me on an anthroplogical tour of myself. I am time traveling.

What I am so grateful to ashtanga for is how deeply it has gotten into me.  I needed strong, long-slow timed released medicine that could get in to that bone level, at least as deep as my habits of living that I had honed for the fist 26 years of my life. Two decades of ashtanga has transformed me to the bones. I find it endearing of ashtanga to lead me to Harrisonburg Virginia  for my first ever guest teaching for a 5 day Ashtanga Yoga Mysore event.

Harrisonburg! I am so excited to walk these streets as the Suzanne Faulkner I have grown up to be and I am so thankful to you for showing me the Suzanne Faulkner that must have been sweeter than I remember. My track coach, my costume history professor, and my Shakespeare professor all seemed genuinely happy to see me. They shared happy memories of our time together 30 years ago. Turns out Harrisonburg is more than a place, it is where some of my some of my strongest guiding forces reside in the shape of the coaches and professors who no doubt had a hand in shaping the me of yesterday that could and would and did become the me of today.

Even though I am very sentimental, I have a terrible memory. I needed this self guided tour of my past to remember to include all of me in who I am. I am all of my years. I contain within me a constellation of mentors that are mixed in with some magical dust from my early 80’s Burg.

I did some delightful ashtanga yoga after teaching a mysore class for the Ashtanga Yoga Club Harrisonburg.

It felt just perfect that my practice this morning was done a stone’s throw away from the first place I ever lived off campus.

time folds space.

Thank You Ashtanga Yoga Club Harrisonburg

and Special Thanks to The Center Yoga located in The Ice House Studios in Harrisonburg Virginia

actual information blog to follow.

had to get this one off my chest.