I adore my yoga classes and go at least 3 times a week. The physical release of lying in Savasana, or Corpse Pose—the final position, meant to help you experience nothingness—is nice enough, but I can’t empty my mind as I’m supposed to. Visions of grocery lists dance in my head, or I worry about bills or car repairs or…or…whatever. I tried a class in Reiki, a system of energy healing facilitated by the laying on of hands. I even got certified as a Level One Practitioner, but I felt like a fraud. If any energy flowed from my partner’s hands to mine, it went right through me. Finally, after starting down every spiritual path I could find, I gave myself up for lost. I accepted that I’m too ground-bound to glimpse the magical high-flying moments that yogis and shamans celebrate. Then I moved to a new house, a lemon-yellow Cape Cod on New York’s Hudson River. The first morning, I stood at the window looking out at the broad sweep of water crowned by endless sky, and I felt calmed, contented, at peace. The river expected no epiphanies and required no revelations. It just did what it had done for centuries—it flowed. And in its presence I could let go of life’s pressures and just be. Now the daily dramas that once cluttered my brain—an overdue assignment, worries about my mother in Florida—flow right along with it. I deal with them more easily, without succumbing to emotion. When I was packing to move here, I never thought this blue-on-blue horizon would help me realize I didn’t have to force my spiritual side; I only needed to be open to whatever spoke to it. The river is constant and calm. And so am I. For years I tried to find ways to quiet my mind. Who knew a yellow house with a river view would finally do the trick? SUSAN CRANDELL is the author of Thinking about Tomorrow: Reinventing Yourself at Midlife.
