Years ago, I was a lot more impatient than I am today. I used to get irritated and angry and offended quite easily. I scream in enclosed areas, I throw things across the room-- I had that kind of intolerance towards my own emotions and the world around me. Through practicing yoga, I found a little bit more space.

I found space to breathe and space to pause and space to reflect and space to take it easy.

I found space to acknowledge whatever it is that I am feeling without trying to change it, because this life by nature is a series of changes.

I found space to observe, space not to sink down, space not to be burdened by the weight I sometimes think I carry.

I found space to grow, space to stay still, space to move, space to move on.

I found space to be completely accepting of who I was, who I am, and who I will be.

I am flesh, blood, bones, yes; but I am also living space. While this body is breathing and this mind knows thinking and the heart keeps loving, I will create space.

This is a guide on how to levitate. Before you (a) get overexcited (b) report me for sorcery, hear me out. Here is a crash course in physics, as written by David Life in his essay: "Do not mistake gravity for electromagnetism - the real key to understanding levitation. It’s all about the electrons. Each atom that makes up the molecules of your body has a shell of electrons that have a negative charge. When the negative electrons encounter other atoms’ electrons they repel each other, just like two negative poles of magnets. This electromagnetic force is strong enough to resist gravitational pull. The electrons of the atoms on the bottoms of your feet repel the atoms of the floor beneath them. You believe that you are walking on the floor, but actually you are floating slightly above the surface! The electron shell can also be missing electrons, and will share electrons with adjacent atoms - that keeps us attached to things, and holds molecules together."

We are already levitating. We just do not perceive it that way. And what is to levitate anyway? It is to float above, to rise up, to lift yourself up. It is to rise in a way that appears magical. And that is what we will try to do-- to rise above. Take the opportunity to be honest with yourself: What is it that you wish to rise above? If you feel that there is something weighing you down, you can choose to float above it rather than be dragged by it. The practice of equanimity gives us the space to float from moment to moment, without attaching to our preferences or suffering from our aversions. To rise above our temporary plights in life is not to deny the inherent difficulties of living a human life. It is not to ignore our struggles. Rather, it is to acknowledge the reality of them all, and then to rise above them.

There will be many opportunities to practice lifting the body up, in lolasana, in eka pada koundinyasana, astavakrasana, etc. The poses may or may not be available to us today. But what is available-- and the kind of lifting up that matters-- is that we can lift up from our difficulties, we can float above our negative tendencies, we can rise above our old conditioned patterns. By being kind to ourselves now, we can lift up from years of being weighed down. By acknowledging the temporal nature of all things, we can rise above challenging situations that test us. Focus on lifting up the mind. Let the body do what it can do today, but do not get distracted. The body being able to lift up or not is one thing, but the root of the kind of levitation we are interested in rests in the mind.

There are some things in life that at times feels almost impossible to bear. Remember this idea of levitation-- to rise up, to float above, to lift yourself up. Do not let the gravity of any situation weigh you down. Lengthen your spine, lift your chin up, stand taller. You can "levitate". You can lift yourself up. You are your own savior.

We think of ourselves as solid. We experience this life as a solid physical being. Well, what else could we be? We certainly feel this solidity when we move. When we stretch our hamstrings, we have no doubt in our minds that the sensation is very real and the hamstrings very solid. And so, it is very interesting to contrast that perception with the reality of us being mostly empty space! What am I talking about? The atoms that comprise all the molecules that form our body are 99.99999999999% empty! To help us visualize this, imagine that an atom is the size of a large football stadium. The solid part of the atom or the nucleus is only as big as an orange. The rest is merely empty space. I think it is in some ways a beautiful metaphorical advice for living this life: to remember that very little is necessary, and to find lightness in that space.

When we practice asana, we are allowing our bodies to find space to live in this world with more ease. We find space in between the toes. We find space between the ears and the shoulders. We find space between each vertebrae of the spine. We even find space in between the eyebrows. And it is the creation of the space that makes us realize how much of our tension is due to compression. We tend to tighten not only our physical body, but crowd our mental space with worries, fears, resentments and other negativities too. We are weighed down by our self-imposed heaviness when we are in fact made mostly of space and of lightness.  

As part of our practice, we can examine the ways in which the lack of space creates tension in our lives. Do we have a recurring physical condition that is a result of our lifestyle choices? Say, for example, lower back pain caused by sitting on a desk because we choose to work long hours? Or are we attached to owning so many material things, so much so that much of our time and energy are spent on just making money and spending that money? Or perhaps we are very restless, uncomfortable with silence or space, that we tend to create our own dramas because we are unconsciously avoiding that quiet solitude? How much space-- and ease-- do we have in our lives?

We are made of flesh, blood, bones, and mostly empty space. But we are not made of anger or jealousy or fear or resentment or bitterness, so let them go. Release them. Empty them out. Create space so that only what is essential stays.