Water is falling from the sky.
Tropical Storm Isaias formed a few days ago in the Gulf of Mexico and traveled north to West Virginia.
I'm reminded that the amount of water on Earth and in our atmosphere never changes—a fact I relearned while helping my grandson with his science homework a few years ago. Like energy, water is never really created or destroyed. It simply changes form in a phenomenon called the water cycle. The water falling from the sky today may once have been part of a river, a glacier, an ocean—or even the body of someone who lived thousands of years ago.
Water is adaptable. It easily changes form and force. It has no fixed shape; it conforms and adjusts to whatever container or obstacle it encounters.
Water is gentle enough to soothe us and powerful enough to reshape the earth. It is ancient and ever-changing, simultaneously contained within us and extending far beyond us.
There is something to learn from this adaptability.
Water doesn't insist on being a river when the conditions call for a stream. It doesn't fight to maintain its shape when the container changes. It responds to what is in front of it, finding another way to move, another way to be.
What if we approached our yoga practice with the same willingness to adapt?
We often carry an idea of what yoga should look like. We have an image of a pose, a particular way of moving, or an expectation of what our bodies ought to be able to do. We may even measure our practice against what we could do yesterday, last year, or ten years ago.
But our bodies are not static. Our energy changes from day to day. Our needs shift with our age, our health, and the demands of our lives. Sometimes we feel strong and expansive. Other times, we need support, stillness, or a gentler way of moving.
A yoga practice that serves us well must be able to change with us.
And while the shape of the practice may change, its purpose - its nature - remains the same: to help us become more aware of ourselves and our experience in the present moment.
Water reminds us that adaptability is not the same as weakness. It takes tremendous force to carve a canyon, but water also knows how to find its way around a stone. It can yield without disappearing. It can change without losing its essential nature.
And our yoga practice can teach us to do the same.
When we prioritize the function of a practice over its form, we open up possibilities. Rather than resisting what has changed, we can work with what is here. We can appreciate ourselves as we are today, without demanding that we be who we were yesterday or who we imagine we should become tomorrow.
Water doesn't need to look the same in every circumstance to be water. And yoga doesn't need to look a certain way to be yoga.
Can we meet ourselves where we are, rather than where we think we should be?
Sometimes, the deepest practice is learning to adapt.