From Sewing to Sutras: Common Threads in My Grandmother’s Shop and Yoga Journey
I spent the most formative years of my life in a basement sewing shop owned by my grandparents, though it was truly my grandmother who ran it.
She was a real trailblazer – running both a successful business and a household with three daughters, all while her husband, a World War II veteran, faithfully reported to her every day for duty. Her strength and dedication were the backbone of our family and community. She built a 24x7 staff of many and fulfilled thousands upon thousands of orders over decades, all over the world.
As a child, I found myself in the heart of it all – the bustling sewing shop, a place filled with magic and creativity. Surrounded by daily deliveries of linens and emblems, tassels and fringe, sequins, beads, and intricate embroidery.
Threads woven into rolls of fabric in every color and texture imaginable – dark and light, rough and soft, shiny and dull. Each piece was beautiful and valuable.
Everywhere I looked, there were colors – lavenders and goldenrod, olives and browns, purples and oranges, from the fairest of the fair to the deepest of the deep. And always, the soothing hum hum humming of sewing machines provided a constant, calming background.
Tapestries.
My grandmother would unroll the fabric and teach me about patterns and how to cut, treating even the discarded scraps with the value of gold. Those were the pieces I got to play with.
Layer by layer, I watched my grandparents convert the ordinary into the extraordinary. Each part, down to the threads and pins, was treated as integral to the creation of a unique masterpiece. Every stitch became important – every seam, every hem – every color enhanced by the color draped next to it.
Hand-crafted, wearable mosaics fashioned with time, with patience, with tries and fails, and perfected through years of practice. And the finished pieces would hang from the ceiling rungs, waiting for customers to return for their fittings.
Customers would come and go throughout the day, each one treated like an old friend. Often, a customer visit would morph into a work break cup of coffee or lunch upstairs in the kitchen. And once you crossed over the top step from the basement into the house, it was no more work talk. It was life – the woven fabrics were left downstairs, and the true weaving began… that is, the weaving of friendship.
`Customers of every background, ethnicity, religion, and political view were now friends. Humans, old and young, in the shades of peaches and browns, of tans and golds, of blacks and reds. My grandparents spent great effort getting to know each and every customer like family – and there at the kitchen table they would sit and chat. There they would weave community.
Tapestries.
So, how does this rich tapestry of fabric and memory connect to the practice of yoga? Well, yoga is very much a tapestry, especially in our community of Sol Seek. In fact, the term yoga “sutra” actually means “thread.”
Think about it – vinyasa yoga is the practice of creating sequences where layer upon layer we build a flow together. Each of us an individual that becomes sewn to the others in the room through movement as music unravels itself like the unraveling of a roll of fabric. Inhaling and exhaling together in a space of humans of every background, ethnicity, religion, and political view.
And yet our hearts beat as one, we move as one, we are joined together by the sutras of our practice.
Each asana, each meditation, each breath is fashioned by time, with patience, with tries and fails, and perfected through years of practice. And we look around the room and see mats of every color – lavenders and goldenrod, olives and browns, purples and oranges, from the fairest of the fair to the deepest of the deep.
As we practice, we weave our stories into one, finally joining together as one voice in the hum hum humming of OHM. And we leave much different than we started – the community tapestry woven in that hour somehow turns the ordinary into the extraordinary.
Every student is a valuable, beautiful, and important thread in our community’s tapestry – the person in front of you, behind you, to your left and to your right. And, echoing back to Maya Angelou, “...we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their color." We are all different, and yet simultaneously ONE.
Tapestries.
This brings me to a final reflection. Perhaps it’s not just the fabric or the sequins in the sewing shop that create a tapestry, nor just the cup of coffee or lunch in the kitchen, or even the downward-facing dog or child’s pose in a yoga flow.
The true tapestry of life is woven through the love and kindness we extend in every encounter with another human being. It’s about offering our hearts and patience, embracing tries and fails, and perfecting our compassion through years of practice.
Perhaps if we can practice weaving THAT sutra on the mat, it will create an unbreakable thread of peace and compassion through our relationships, our families, and the fabric of our lives.
