Summer is here. Life is opening. Concerts. Road trips. Restaurants. Beach days and bonfire nights.

I've been so excited for the nice weather and life to be back to normal I literally dove right in! Yes, I'll attend. Yes, let's do that. Yes, let's plan that and go there. Yes Yes Yes...

The days have been busy with work as usual and the weekends and evenings have been no rest. Like a lot of transitions, we move too quickly. We forget that our mind isn't running the show - our body is.

The final resting pose at the end of a yoga practice is Shavasana. I wrote a blog at the beginning of Covid called "Endless Shavasana." You can read it here.

But there's more. After Shavasana, there is still more yoga practice. We don't pop up off our mat at the first ding of the bell and rush out of the room. We don't say, "Yay, it's over; I can get on with my life. My yoga chore is done."

We begin with deep inhales and exhales. We remain still. We give the body time to transition out of Shavasana and into daily life. We make small movements and allow our body to wake up. We create a gentle transition by honoring the body and considering how we will move next.

We are not mindless, but mindful. We move gently.

Staying still and creating slow transitions used to be painfully challenging for me. When the instructor would guide me to make small movements, I wanted to immediately sit up and check my phone. I wanted to roll up my mat and start putting on my shoes. I had already practiced yoga for over an hour. Why was this last part such a drawn-out process? I had lots of things to get to and get done.

Today at the end of my yoga classes, I guide a slow transition out of Shavasana. We take time on our backs, then on our sides, and finally seated. We allow our body and our nervous system to catch up to our minds.

The Shavasana - the stillness, and the coming out - the transition - are all yoga. Like this time of opening, of summer, of longer days and more invitations, let's be gentle and kind to ourselves. Let's try to still walk slowly. We don't need to move from always in the house to always out - we can take some pieces of the quarantine that worked for us and allow them to still exist in our lives. There are not two speeds - pandemic life and non-pandemic life.

There is an ease and a balance somewhere in the middle, and a gentle transition to get us there.