Today the teacher commented on how much better I have gotten. Actually, she said something yoga-esque like, “It is fantastic to see how much your practice has changed.” I felt proud. It was great to feel strong again after a few days of feeling exhausted. It is nice to see it come around again. I got super cold before coming to yoga. It was so nice to be in the hot room which isn’t feeling all that hot to me any more. I felt warm and cozy by the end and that was awesome. I am loving the hot...
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Today is Sunday and figuring out how to get to yoga around family activities is a bit challenging. I find a class at 12:30 which means we take 2 cars to church. I could tell Mel really wanted me to go to church with him, so I left right after. Turns out my clothes were in the dryer so I had to come home anyway, and there he was pulling up behind me, so we could have taken one car in the first place. There is still a clumsiness to my scheduling and making my yoga work. I hope this gets more graceful with time. I am letting the clumsiness be okay. We are absorbing a new commitment into our lives and it is a gradual process. Having me exercise 7 times a week is completely new in our relationship. I get to yoga and I get the blocks and strap and put them next to me just in case, but I am deeply tired. I lie down on my mat and stay there the entire hour and 25 minutes. I nap a little, breathe a lot and by the end, I feel refreshed. Lying in shavasana for a whole class is still challenging for my ego. I know I have to do it in order to make it through the challenge when I get tired, but I want to be stronger and able to do more. It is humbling. I have heard this word used several times by teachers and it is deeply true. Not because I feel bad about lying on the mat, but because I wish I didn’t need to. All that said, it is so amazingly pleasant to lie there. I feel like I am melting into the floor. My thoughts are a bit strange, especially when I doze a little and wake up dreaming of video games or weird jarring thoughts. I notice and let them go and focus on breathing again. It is deeply restful. As I get...
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I made it to yoga for an 8am class. I don’t like rushing into yoga but I realized at the last minute I could make this class. I like being 15 minutes early and having my time on my mat before the class starts. I feel excited to be there but it feels like not very long from the 6:30pm class yesterday. I have this feeling that I haven’t had enough recovery time. I had really crazy dreams last night. Nightmare after nightmare. In one I dreamed I got trapped under a tree under water and I couldn’t move. I could imagine Mel trying to save me and I just tried to get to a place of acceptance really fast sending loving thoughts to all my family. It was a super intense dream and I accepted my own death. It seemed very yoga-esque as I let go of my attachment to life and accepted the situation as it was instead of struggling and suffering. I didn’t do all the poses today. I could feel the fatigue in my body. I did a few of them but then spent time lying in shavasana on my mat. I probably did about 1/2 the poses. I started tracking my food and exercise and I was motivated to track more minutes of yoga and I think this was a mistake. I think I didn’t allow it to be okay to be tired. I asked “more” of my body than I needed. I need to be very clear to be gentle with my body and to allow it to do as much yoga as feels right. I don’t need to push beyond that. I felt exhausted after today’s yoga and full of sugar cravings. I have been having these sugar cravings since I started, as if my body is trying to find energy. I ate a bunch of protein today to see if that would help. I also had a glass of wine. I felt kind of yucky...
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I am so excited to get to yoga today. It has required some child management craziness. I am entering the studio after having brought the boys with me to yoga. I have shown them the bench in the lobby, the bench outside and sent them to the dollar store down the way with $2.50 each to “buy something” and $1.25 each to get something to eat, since once we left the house they were “starving” after 3 hours of being home where there are $200 worth of appropriate snacks I bought at Costco yesterday to try to combat exactly this perpetual starvation. Mel is on his way to get them but hit traffic and so didn’t make it home today. We had talked about this dollar store option early in the week and the boys are excited about going shopping alone. I wonder if I will be worried about them the whole time or if I can relax and enjoy my yoga. We’ll see. They run off and I get changed and line up for this very busy class. There are people everywhere lined up to get in. Apparently Moksha Yoga has prime time at 6:30 on Friday night. I stand near the door since all the seats are taken. I am feeling like it will be packed and mention it to a woman next to me. She says she loves the feel of the collective in full classes, the feeling of all the people moving together in unison. Talk about a perspective shift. I enjoy the feel of the collective and make it through the whole class. The teacher is a woman who is shaped more like me. I really like this about this yoga studio. People have said everyone who does yoga is twiggy but this is just not the case here. I feel welcomed, treasured, supported, and stretched. My mind and my body. I love...
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I get up early and make it to the 6:30am Silent Moksha class. I have avoided this silent class because I felt like I really needed the teacher’s voice helping me do better yoga. I realized yesterday that I know the poses well enough to get through this class. I also have a medical test tomorrow and I am not supposed to exercise. This has provided a fair bit of brain fodder. Should I cancel the test? Should I miss a day of yoga? Neither seemed very satisfying as far as solutions go. Somehow it all mostly comes together, though. I am physically tired and this seems like a great day to lie in shavasana thus “doing yoga” and not physically exercising. A silent class seems like a great way to lie on my mat in silence and breathe. I get in the room. The teacher is friendly and very upbeat for 6am. I decide to try a few poses just to see how the yoga works. I let her know I may be lying down most of the time so she doesn’t think I am not following or having a physical issue. I find it easy to follow the poses and I enjoy it. Then I decide to lie on my mat. I hadn’t realized that because it is a silent class the lights are on bright so people can really see the poses–makes sense but it was distracting for my shavasana. I am also struggling with stilling my thoughts. In the beginning it was so much easier. I could just lie down and let things drift away. I am struggling with thoughts of a client that are hard to let go, weird thoughts of challenges that aren’t real–literally battling imaginary monsters as I drift into a deep relaxed state. I make it through the hour but somehow miss the illusive “inner peace.” I am noticing my attachment to achieving this and decide this journey inside my head is completely okay, as is...
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The teacher today is less rigorous in terms of correcting postures than the teacher yesterday. Some of the teachers are so rigorous and generous in their correction of poses throughout the class. If they correct even one pose, helping me to have better form, I notice how their words stay with me for days as I try to get to that perfect form in subsequent classes. Some of the teachers do this regularly and some only occasionally. I notice that I prefer rigor. I like to try to get the poses perfect and to stretch into postures that are as correct as possible. I make it through this class today and feel proud that I have made it through a second class where I was able to do most of the poses. I am very sleepy today afterward. I feel deeply tired. I have a medical test on Friday that requires me to go easy on the exercise and I think tomorrow I will take it really slow and try to give my body a...
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