grace.

We sit in a circle.  10 teen aged young women plunked down on donated mats, about to check in before our hatha yoga practice in San Francisco’s Juvenile Justice Center.  Behind and above me, the walls are lined with cells, like stark caves carved into a rock wall.  Around us is the buzz of Unit 5; phones ringing, counselors talking, the metallic jangle of handcuffs being placed on a girl off to her court date.  The smell of cheap lunch wafts from the kitchen, leftover from the day’s last meal.

After bowing to each girl, looking them in the eye and saying, “Namaste”, I join them on a faded mat and began the check in.  Check in is a form of meeting and connecting we of The Art of Yoga Project do upon greeting our students at each of the four juvenile hall sites we regularly visit.  As usual, I ask them to say their name and this time I spontaneously add: “tell me about grace”.  A smattering of “what”s? hurled back at me and smiling I agreed- Yes, what is grace?

What is grace? What does grace mean to us?  What does it mean to a child; an incarcerated youth; a victim of abuse; a girl surviving on the streets in between harassments from her pimp; to one who finds a haven of support in a violent gang? What is grace to any of us who is drowning in fear; to one who has no safe place within or outside of them?  Who has time for grace when there is no food, no direction, no freedom, and no true support?

These young women, some still girls, think about it.  A few say that they don’t know, a few followed my prompt and said: “my child”, “laughter”, “my girlfriend”, “love”.  One began to break it down…”well, we say grace before dinner… so: thanks?”

In this very moment the memory fills my heart with smiles.  Despite every circumstance in the book, despite possible a later heckling form the other girls, their bleak surroundings and their limited experiences, they tried.  And this I commend them on every moment of our yoga time together.  Trying.  Reaching.  Striving for a positive existence.

Deep in the written definition grace, the dictionary mentions divine grace.  I give you my favored number one definition:

1.     Seemingly effortless beauty or charm of movement, form, or proportion.

I call upon images of a gracefully soaring hawk, a tree waving in the wind, the grace of a soulful song, or of a beautiful dancer.  And then there is the subtlety of human grace; of falling and getting up again, the grace of admittance, of surrender, of reaching out, of trusting, of everything flowing in and out of a wide, open heart.

How do weave grace into our lives, into our every moment so that we become effortless and elegant in our thoughts, words and actions? Whether it is necessary or not is a personal choice.  For me there is no question that I want to flow with effortlessness, and only yoga has truly shown me the way toward grace.  With no attachment to style or certainty the ancient practice of yoga raises us from the gnarled roots of existence, through the thickness of our physical constraints to branching artfully into the world, into breath, into beauty, to the fruit of our determined actions.

Through yoga I see that freedom is grace, and grace is freedom. Not just material freedom, or, as with the young women of juvenile hall’s Unit 5- freedom from jail.  But freedom from our own tenseness, our own jarring doubt, and halting fear.  Through yoga, I want to share with these kids that their uniqueness is acceptable, that they can fall down and lift themselves back up again, that they can take each breath and use it to breathe life into a new way of being, that they can take one step at a time in a direction that serves them and all of humanity.

All I, all we- can do, is to continue to try.  And in these attempts, may we all find at least a little loving grace.