howling

Last Friday night on the train going home, I was chanting quietly pretty much to myself with my headphones on, when I notice the woman seated in front of me becoming agitated. She tilted her head back, into the crook between the window and the seat and howled a few times as if she were answering a wolf call. She did this a number of times on the 2 hour journey home.
Now, I know my voice isn't smooth as silk. But I'm pretty sure I also don't howl like a dog. And given the amount of noise going on in the train, it's a mystery to me that she heard me at all. Not only was there the usual throng of people talking to one another, and talking on their cell phones, but the new thing is these walkie talkie phones which emit a nerve-racking beep everytime the speaker changes -- not to mention that we now get to hear both sides of the conversations. Add to that the clackety clack, clack clack of the train on the tracks, and the booming voice of a man who seemed to have a clergy collar on, but was striking up one sided conversations with anyone who would listen -- and the fact that I could hear all this while quietly chanting to myself. Well, you get the picture, I'm sure.
At first I was embarrassed, mortified, humiliated into silence. But I hadn't taken my headphones off, and slowly began chanting again. And thinking about whether I was the one being rude, by refusing to stop singing. Finally, it became clear to me, that the woman who was annoyed by the sound of my voice in song had every right to be annoyed, but also had the mobility to move, as I do myself when there's a shrieking kid and I have a headache, or some other annoyance I just can't bear.
And that gave me the comfort I needed to continue my chants as quietly as possible, without feeling threatened or that I was somehow misbehaving in public.
Of course, had she simply leaned over nicely and asked me what I was singing, and would I mind not doing so because she had a headache or was super sensitive to sound, I would have been happy to stop or move. But her reaction was so twisted it really was a magnificent teaching, giving me pause to really consider the situation and investigate how I felt and why.
I've been doing a lot of investigating lately. And today I took a new yoga class at Shri Yoga and the instructor was guiding us to think of our past as something that supported us in our journey into the future.
She used the body - specifically our legs -- as connective metaphors. In the Warrior II pose, our back legs, straightened, were the past which supported us; our front legs, bent and leaning, were the future.
She told us also about a friend she'd spoken to in the morning, who'd said she always takes some time in the morning to remember who she is.
It was a wonderfully challenging class physically, and refreshing spiritually. Every ounce was engagement, from ears to lungs to little toes.