Drums of Freedom

Last night I went to a small dinner party at the home of a woman I met at the synagogue here in Colorado Springs. She graduated from Harvard three years before I did. Her very cool job is making candles, incense, essential oils and tinctures and selling them on the internet and at Rennaisance festivals. I have never been to the Rennaisance festival, which passes through Larkspur, about 45 minutes north of here, every summer. But I like to think of myself as the type of person who might go to the Rennaisance fest and eat vegan food and buy essential oils. I do two out of three, anyway. And I did follow the Grateful Dead on and off in college. That's gotta count for something.

My friend, who sells her stuff at Kamala's Own, has a drumming circle every third Saturday of the month, which happened to be yesterday. That meant that a bunch of the dinner party attendees had their drums, and were in that playin' kinda mood. At some point after dinner someone started tapping out a beat during conversation. Slowly, others joined in, until the room was throbbing with sound. I'm not a drummer. But, like the Rennaisance festival fantasy, I want to be the kind of person who goes to drum circles. Honestly, I'm not sure why I never have.... Until last night.

I swayed and grooved and finally picked up the drum sitting on the floor near me and joined in. Wow. It was wonderful. I felt free. I felt alive. I was vibrating with my own sound and the sound in the room and the heartbeats of everyone around me.

I felt so relaxed afterwards. And then everyone started calling me Yoga Girl. I'm not sure exactly what I was doing aside from sitting the way I always do, but I definitely took the moniker as a compliment. Especially because these days my hips are so tight from all the stair climbing that when I try to sit in full pigeon pose the knee that is on top is basically sticking up on a level with my shoulder. But hey. I'm Yoga Girl.