Our yoga teacher Nikki at Surf With Amigas is my favorite yoga teacher ever. She’s not all “woo woo” up-in-the-clouds, overly-spaced-out like so many yoga teachers can be, and yet she’s super spiritual and very tuned into the energy that surrounds us and emanates from us. She primarily teaches yin classes, which is exactly what I want post-surf, with quite a bit of guided meditation relevant to something that happened that day, the phase of the moon, or the changing season.

I’m busy during retreats and don’t always get a chance to participate in her class, but when I do make time to attend I’m always grateful. The other day we had a super shoulder-opener class that ended with an extra long savasana and a guided meditation. It was the most emotional I’ve felt in a yoga class since the first class I ever took with Nikki where I actually shed a few tears.

She asked us to imagine ourselves lying on the beach in the sand with the waves lapping up towards our feet. She vividly described the waves coming up one at a time, each one reaching further along our bodies until we were surrounded by warm water from toe to head. To be honest, I was so lost in the trance that I can’t accurately repeat what she was saying. I can say that I don’t particularly love the feeling of rolling in the sand or lying there as waves wash up over me. I imagined sand flooding into my bikini bottoms and wanted to get up out of the water. So I got up, walked a few feet further up the beach, and flopped down on a sarong in the shade of a big almond tree just above the high tide line. I looked down at the gentle shorebreak and saw my husband Kim and our baby holding hands, standing ankle deep in the water. As Nikki described the waves coming and going, I imagined them soaking Kim and the baby’s feet, then ankles, then knees, etc. I had dedicated the practice to nourishing the new life growing inside me. Nourishing the baby with the early experience of the sea. The delicious feeling of warm salty water washing over toes and then knees. I felt so happy and content to lay there and watch them enjoying the ocean together.

I could only see the baby from behind, a toddler with curly blonde hair, and I kept trying to tell if it was a girl or a boy. With each successive wave, the gender seemed to change. First I thought he was a boy, then she was a girl, and back and forth until I gave up trying to guess and just relaxed in the realization that the joy I felt was equal in either case.

I’m so looking forward to introducing our little one to the ocean.