I was pulling into the Publix parking one Sunday—scanning for open spots, wondering why the store seemed unusually crowded, trying to ignore the gnawing hunger in my stomach, deliberately ignoring the fact that grocery shopping while hungry never ends well—when a flicker of movement caught my eye: an eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly fluttering near the blossoms of a dogwood tree, occasionally settling onto a flower to feed.
Different individual butterfly, same species
The fact that I noticed the swallowtail from a distance isn’t at all surprising. Because I’ve worked in a butterfly-centric ecology lab for several years, my eye is particularly attuned to colorful, fluttering objects, and I often stop in my tracks in order to identify passing lepidopterans. But in this setting, surrounded by dogwood blossoms and illuminated by late afternoon light, the butterfly stood out in stark contrast to the hassle of the parking lot, and I watched it for several minutes simply because I could.
How often do we miss moments of beauty because we’re running on autopilot? I can guarantee that without my background in the lab, I would have never noticed the swallowtail, distracted as I initially was by grocery lists, shopping carts, and incoming cars.
Atha yoga anushasanam, reads the first yoga sutra: now begins the practice of yoga. Now is the practice of yoga, and the practice of yoga is now. In my own life, I’ve found that this involves being consciously open to what each moment might bring; for example, noticing the warmth of the sun on my skin as I walk rather than just ruminating about the software coding issues I faced at work, or savoring each sip of coffee in the morning instead of using it as a tool to get out of bed. The practice of now is tuning the mind’s eye to notice the beauty that comes our way.
Nicole Kish Yoga 