It's time to start walking again

Wow...it's been a while, I guess. I wonder if anyone's out there still reading this thing. Oh well, I'll write it anyway.

I'd say I'd just been lazy in writing, but I think the truth is that I decided to just sit down in the middle of the path and take a break. I figure part of my journey includes resting once and a while. Today it was time to start walking again, I guess.

I went to yoga class tonight. I've been going twice a week for several months now. I had a great home yoga practice going for a couple years before I got pregnant. Not wanting to mess up anything, I pretty much stopped once I was pregnant, and it's not hard to imagine that I didn't pick it up again after having given birth (there's not much left of you after caring for a baby).

I had been wanting to get back to it for a while, but I was having a hard time getting motivated. The room I had practiced in (an extra bedroom I called my own lair) was turned into a nursery. After putting a baby to bed, I wanted to just sit there and not do anything, much less anything requiring physical or mental exertion. So when a friend asked if I'd want to try a yoga class with her, I agreed wholeheartedly.

In case you've never done yoga, let me clear up a few misconceptions for you. First, it's not about how flexible you are. It doesn't matter if you can't touch your toes. It's about finding your limit, then throwing the idea of limits out the window. It's about finding something just a little further (physically, mentally, spiritually) and seeing what there is to learn in that place. If you open your mind, you can feel the power thrum through your body as you inhale and raise your arms radiantly above your head. You can find silence in a chaotic mind as you turn yourself upside down. You can find strength in yourself when you hold a difficult pose one breath cycle longer than you think possible.

This segues into the next misconception: yoga is not a workout. I have a hard time working up a sweat when I exercise. No matter how hard my heart pounds or much I pant, I don't sweat. However, my entire body is dripping during class, my heart is pounding, and I have trouble controlling my ujjayi breath. Not all forms of yoga are physically strenuous, but the one I practice is (vinyasa flow). You aren't just getting into a pose and holding it...every inhale and exhale is a movement. Inhale--raise your arms above your head; exhale--bend at the waist. Inhale--straighten halfway up; exhale--step back to downward facing dog. Inhale--shift forward into plank (starting position of a push up); exhale--slowing lower your straight body to the floor. Inhale--lift your upper body off the floor (cobra); exhale--lower down and push straight up to plank then back to downward dog again. Do some more things, and repeat about 5 times.

The other misconception is that yoga is just a workout. While many find it a great full-body workout (including myself), it's an opportunity to learn something and apply it off the mat. For example, learning to remain calm and breathe while your holding yourself in a low lunge position for 2 minutes can be applied when a driver cuts you off and you want to start yelling. You instead find yourself able to just breathe and move past the moment, letting the anger drift by you without settling. This mental application is a little harder to do sometimes, at least for me.

Okay, my point in this yoga lesson from my perspective? Ever since coming back to the mat this time around, I've been having a hard time getting past the physical to the mental and spiritual application. I used to move right into meditation time after my home practice and discover all sorts of things I needed to know or learn about myself. Now...I concentrate on not puking sometimes. As I drove home tonight, I figured the only way to get past this was to reflect on what I did learn about myself during this session. What I discovered was pretty interesting to me.

Yoga is teaching me pride and humility at the same time. I thought this was funny, because they sort of cancel each other out. However, I liked that it's both, because it means there's still an interesting person buried inside me. Tonight's practice especially illustrated this for me. I'm the type of person who gets kinda cocky in my head when I can do something well. When I can't do something, I have self-esteem issues about it. So I'm cocky in class about how flexible I am. It makes me feel good that the teachers need to find variations of poses so that I can find a stretch. However, I have no stamina and bad balance. If we do a lot of repetition of movements, my strength gets sapped pretty fast, and I start telling myself what a wuss I am and that everyone else is thinking I don't belong there.

In tonight's class, we had a balance of both. I started out anxious, because we were doing lots of cycles of movement. I will admit it...I've sometimes had to walk out of class, because I've about passed out. I live in fear every week of having to do this and what it conveys to the other students and the teacher, which of course starts the vicious cycle of self-doubt. When our practice tonight then moved to holding poses that demonstrated flexibility, I started getting all proud of myself. Here I could shine! Then just as I got comfortable (literally and mentally), we were back to moving again. Hello devil. Then we were back to flexibility. Hello angel. I went from glowing that I could put my feet behind my head when no one else could to literally cursing under my breath when I finally could flop down from bow pose.

On my reflection driving home, I realized that my yoga practice is going to teach me to find the soft place in between pride and self-doubt...the place where I just am. This I can apply to anything then. It'll help me not be a competitive mom (one of my pet peeves) and also to change my personal view of my body and my worth. I'm hoping it'll help with a plethora of other faults I've identified in myself I want to change, but only time will tell.

Anyway, thanks for listening. Go yoga!