“I see you.”

Despite today’s open world, in which we post updates on the most mundane daily activities on our Twitter pages and Facebook walls, in which we share our opinions and thoughts and ratings on the message boards of Yelp or Digg or YouTube, I find it ironic that it’s never been easier to hide.

Fake usernames.  Fake profiles.  We can use avatars instead of our real faces.  We can give ourselves cute nicknames instead of our given names.  We can try to date within the virtual bar scenes of OkCupid or Match.com or e-Harmony—but who’s to say that what is written on each person’s page is true?

Even blogs—we can hide behind these, too, beneath a protective veil of self-made secrecy and anonymity. 

In yesterday afternoon’s yoga class, I got to thinking about how easy it can be to stay hidden in our day-to-day lives—and how, in yoga, it is impossible.

The class was small for a Sunday, but I rather liked the soft hum of breaths, the easy rhythm our few bodies found together, the teacher’s ability to correct each of us by name.  My yoga felt peaceful, slow, relaxed.  With no one immediately around me and with my perfectly unobstructed view in the mirror, I almost felt as though I was practicing alone, in my own quiet reverie.

Except, all the while, the teacher kept calling us out—for the bent knees, the curved spine, the open mouth, the loose grip.  She exclaimed, more than once, “I can see you!   I can see everything from up here!”

And then, she’d follow that up with, “But, you can see everything, too.  Because, you know, this yoga hides nothing.”

I like to think that I am a genuine, honest person.  What you see is what you get.  I don’t wear pretenses well.  I have been told, many times, that I am an open book, that my heart beats on my sleeve, and that I would make for a terrible poker player because every hand I hold is written plainly on my face. 

But, I know that sometimes I do go through my days hiding behind a thin wall of sorts.  A wall that attempts to hide the exhausion from a tossing, turning, sleepless night, and to cover up the anxiety of finishing projects at work,  and to shield me, at least a little bit, from completely exposing my vulnerability, my want. 

Perhaps I feel so close, so very, wonderfully close, to my yoga these days because it is the one place in which I feel I can truly bare all.  I don’t have to “be strong.”  I don’t have to force excitement or bury any emotion.  I don’t have to pretend my feelings away.  

I hide nothing. 

I couldn’t even if I tried.  My body, those mirrors,  the yoga working its way through me—they can’t lie.  They can’t show me anything but who and what I am, at the core, on that given day, yes, but on all days, really.

There, on my mat, I am stripped down and raw and utterly, beautifully exposed. 

“I see you!” my teacher cries.

I look into my eyes.  Yes.  I see me, too.

And, there, unmasked, unfolded, wrenched open and in front of the wall, I have never looked more radiant.

If only you were there to see me, too.

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