In Rhythm with Summer: What the Windows Taught Me

I spent many years teaching at a yoga center, and in that time, the students taught me just as much as I taught them — particularly about how we live in relation to the seasons.

In winter, the great wall of windows became its own kind of altar. Students would spread their mats around the room, but there was always a quiet gathering near the glass — drawn, without thinking, toward whatever light was available. I would look out at the bare tree just beyond the glass, its branches stripped clean, and feel the cold holding everything still on the other side. We were all reaching, in our own way, for warmth.

In summer, the same windows told a different story. The heat came through the glass as if the sun itself were trying to move inside. And just like animals in the natural world seeking shade and earth, students would drift away from the windows without a word, settling low to the ground, bodies close to the cool of the floor. That same bare tree — transformed now — sparkled like hammered gold, its leaves dancing with the light in the easy breeze of a long afternoon.

The space stayed exactly the same. We were the ones who moved.