Why I was at yoga bright and early after a late-night Seder

It may be anathema to some — for halachic reasons or simply because of the four cups of wine — to hear that after Seder, I was up early and at Sunday-morning yoga. For me, the teacher’s musings coalesced beautifully with the thoughts lingering from the night before.

My yoga teacher is American and has a Jewish name, to give some context.  Make of that what you will. She began today’s class with this comment, “A friend told me this week that you can come closest to the best version of yourself out in the world when you arrive with strong foundations.”

The session, on the first day of Pesach, involved a lot of balancing, leaning, dreaded chair pose — and, ultimately, very sore legs. All the while, the teacher paced the room and intoned, “Focus on your feet. Your strong foundations.” That mantra carried through each sequence, whether we were balancing on one leg in a kind of arm-and-leg twist or lying flat on the mat.

As much as a yoga teacher reminds participants to stay present and avoid letting the mind wander, mine was wandering this morning right back to the desert, to Egypt, to the past, but yes, also, to the present. As last night’s Seder ended, I shared my gratitude that we can sit with all ages, children and teens, parents and grandparents, for hours, reading about liberation, dissecting rabbinic dilemmas, and singing for the future. Today, not many can say they had the opportunity to prioritize sitting with family, friends and strangers, without phones, reading a script together.

From Mitzrayim to the mat

Each week when we say kiddush at our Shabbat table, we mention “zecher l’yetziat Mitzrayim” — in remembrance of the exodus from Egypt. Shabbat is a memorial to leaving Egypt so this memory of leaving slavery walks alongside us from week to week. We left Egypt with a vision in mind — freedom from slavery meant forming a nation and going home. The weekly memory of leaving slavery, of choosing freedom, responsibility and future, helps to maintain a strong foundation.

As I focused on a spot on the wall, the yoga teacher’s voice traveled from the back of the room: “If you have strong foundations,” she said, “you can take a risk. You can push yourself to the edge of the mat. You can be exposed to a new possibility.” I found myself pulling in my core, grounding my feet, and balancing in a way I had never quite managed before.

Dor le-dor: Generation to generation

As a Jewish community, we are lucky to have so many opportunities for building foundations—rituals, teachings, stories—served to us on a platter. But foundations need work. They need muscle. This year and last year’s Seder are spaces of paradox. There is joy and terrible pain, knowing who is missing from their family table.

Those of us raising children and teens know the world they are stepping into. If we educate them with pride and strong foundations, they will begin to build their own. The Seder table — where people gather with different perspectives on freedom, obligation, and belonging — is often a practice ground for disagreement. With strong metaphorical feet, our children will be able to reach for the edge, hear difficult things, and yes — they’ll probably fall, as I often do on the mat. But with a steady base, they’ll look others in the eye, hear challenge without defensiveness, and remain open to learning. With strong foundations, they will nurture generosity, curiosity, and integrity.

Like the roots of a tree, we can only build foundations out of the resources available to us. When I mentioned to my children that I’d prefer to focus on the beauty of our own culture, rather than the antisemitism around us, one of them disagreed. He reflected that, for many people today, it is precisely antisemitism that compels them to invest more deeply in their identity and foundations. Like all living things, we grow in response to the weather around us.

Finding focus

From Mitzrayim to the mat, strong foundations come not from avoiding risk, but from knowing what steadies us. Chair pose will probably always hurt even when our legs are strong. But with steady feet and ancient stories, I believe we can hold the balance and open our arms generously wide.