There is not a yoga teacher that I know, myself included, who has not had the experience of bursting into tears suddenly, surprisingly, in a yoga pose. The first time I remember was in a gentle supine twist. Then in camel pose, an active back bend.

It can be hip openers for some, shoulder stretches for others. It can be the soft suggestion of the instructor to “allow the body to open” or “offer that part some compassion” or “just breathe”.

“The issues are in the tissues,” one of my teachers said during training. I get that. We can open a part of the body and some memory, some pain, was hiding there. We experience it again and can allow it to move through the body and out, perhaps repeatedly, until that area is clear of old trauma. We don’t even have to know cognitively what it was. We have only to be willing to feel.

I also have come to see those tears in yoga as tears of reunion.

You know how the airport reunion scenes make us cry? Or the military parent surprising their little one at school? The sweet relief of being in the arms of our beloved once again.

We are meeting all of our parts, the whole and the holiness of our selves, on the yoga mat. We are coming back together, re-uniting, re-membering. Some of us have rejected our own bodies and it is a moment of reconciliation. Some of us just went away for a while and feel the joy of returning.

Even when it is an old pain that is uncovered, it is bringing back into the fold those cells and the energy there.

We are regaining all of our faculties, untold wisdom, and vitality. What joy! What possibilities! What a gift to bring a reunited Being back to the world!

So lie in savasana and let the tears roll down into your hair.

Sit and listen to the words of your teacher and let them touch you.

Whisper to your self, “Welcome back. I love you.”