Come On, It's Only 40 Days

Ten minutes on the mat.  Just ten minutes, but it’s better than nothing as I keep telling myself (and as the doctor who inspired this process told the class I attended).  

I concentrated on my breathing for the whole ten minutes.  That’s something I never do on the mat, even though it’s the way all my teachers start their classes.  I don’t enjoy deep breathing exercises.  My dislike probably originates from my chronic bronchitis/asthma days, when all breathing was difficult.  The head cold and cough I’m still getting over made me realize that I have a deep fear of wheezing.  I haven’t wheezed for 40 years, but the trauma lingers on.  

Twenty minutes on the mat.  I’m still easing myself back into the routine, definitely not pushing myself.  Excuses aside, however, I know I need to work harder, go deeper, sweat more than I have been sweating on the mat.  I saw all that in the mirror on vacation.

Twenty-five minutes on the mat yesterday; 30 minutes today.  After taking two weeks off, I was pretty sure I’d be stiff getting into poses, that I’d taken at least one step backward.  But to my great surprise, I haven’t lost anything.

But I also don’t have as much as I thought.  While on vacation and staying in a hotel, I did my daily practice in front of a mirror--something I don’t do at home or even in yoga class.  That cruel mirror made me see that while cruising through my practice, my arms are often out of position, my back isn’t very straight, and my hips tend to get out of line.  I don’t look nearly as good in the mirror as I do in my head.  I didn’t even like the look of my face in my room’s mirror.  Everything looked so different when I found myself in different lighting and atmospheres.

Here’s what happened.  On Day 17, I left for a four-day holiday with my family.  Because planes and hotels would be involved, I knew it would be tough to get in my 10 minutes on the mat.  But the benefits of a daily yoga practice were already making themselves felt and I was extremely determined. Over the first three days, I pulled off some mild heroics and got the job done. On the fourth day, I woke up feeling an unusual type of fatigue. By the time we’d flown home and I was back within arm’s reach of my beloved (albeit slightly worn and slippery) mat, I felt flattened.  I tried to muster up the spirit to do some gentle twists, but the flesh was just too weak.

The next 10 days were pretty much devoted to being sick--first with a gastrointestinal nightmare, then with aches, chills, and head-cold stuff.  Occasionally it occurred to me that a bit of yoga might speed the recovery process, but I barely had the energy to take care of life’s essentials much less unroll my mat.  I was truly was the walking dead, only I wasn’t even walking that much.  Feeling so sick was rough; browbeating myself for being such a lay-about was rougher.

A few days ago I began to feel better.  With my reclaimed wellness came a certain amount of bliss, a hefty dose of guilt over having blown my best-laid Lenten plans once again, and mounds of uncertainty over what to do with this blog.  I went back and forth for two days, then finally decided to confess my sins.  Facing my failure in words on a screen might, after all, be part of The Process.

It’s highly probably that I simply picked up a nasty bug while traveling.  Easy to do.  But I’m also weighing the possibility that the abrupt halt to my daily yoga practice caused my body to react angrily.  And then there’s the possibility that all my yoga twists and bends were doing such a good job of pushing toxins out of my body, of moving internal wastes and fluids around, that when I stopped, things went haywire.  Perhaps getting sick was a major detox that I myself had launched.  I know some natural health practitioners who believe colds and the flu should be embraced as effective releases of long-held, unhealthy toxins.  When our noses start draining and we’re coughing up gunk, our bodies are doing what needs to be done.  I just decided to accept my body-and-soul flattening illness as a really beautiful thing.

I haven’t done my minutes on the mat yet today because I’ve been so busy catching up with the rest of my life.  Clearly, putting my practice at the top of my agenda is a lesson I need to learn.  The other lesson, slowly penetrating my thick skull, is that I really need to give up the browbeating and simply accept the magical mysteries of my Lenten process. Go with the flow for chrissakes, B. 

Fifteen minutes on the mat.  Once again, time management was an issue.  I had a lot to do today and got off to a slow start, had to play catch-up right up until now--bedtime.

I didn't have much time to spare when I finally hit the mat late in the afternoon, so I tried to make every minute count.  I decided from the start that Sun Salutations were on the agenda; the rest of the time I did what my body told me to do.

Twenty-five minutes on the mat.  It’s a total miracle that I even stepped on it.  I shoveled long and hard yesterday, then got up today and shoveled some more.  My whole body felt it.  If I weren’t feeling so good about not messing up a single day of Lent so far, I might have decided yoga was too much for these 62-year-old muscles and joints.

It was a gentle practice; I aimed to merely stretch out the muscles I’d been working the hardest.  And then a couple of easy flows.  I felt fine once I got going, but was constantly worrying about messing up some part of me by being over-zealous.

Sixty minutes on the mat.  My longest practice since Lent began and I can chalk it up to the blizzard that was raging outside.  There were plenty of unpleasant household chores I could have knocked off, but it was much more pleasant on the mat.

Since I’ve been working my hip and shoulder joints pretty hard, I’m feeling them.  At first it was pain, now I’m just feeling them.  While in a deep bend today, it flashed through my mind that my joints are coming back to life.  It feels as though I’m clearing out debris, loosening tight ligaments, and kind of, sort of pushing my anatomy back into its original condition.

Twenty-five minutes on the mat.  And I barely got that in because of bad time management.  I definitely can do better in that department.

Fifty minutes on the mat.  While working through some poses today, it occurred to me that each time I can’t do the full expression of a pose or are unable to go deeper in it than I did the day before, I feel disappointed in myself.  Twists, especially, keep giving me trouble because I lack flexibility in my back and hips.  Every day that I fail to twist a little further, I get down on myself.

My disappointment doesn’t haunt me and I never think about it as I go about my day.  But I noticed this morning that meeting the same old disappointments day after day feels counter-productive.  On the other hand, when some part of me gets a little looser, I enjoy a brief high.  

Forty minutes on the mat. Then I walked four miles. No big deal in and of itself since I often walk further, but the temperature was 25 when I started, 22 by the time I got home. While walking, I usually get lost in my thoughts and the miles fly by.  Not this time.  Nothing flew by.  My frozen legs were barely walking toward the end of the final mile.

Forty minutes on the mat.  Since Day 1, I’ve been trying to work my hips pretty hard because I’d been having pain in my left hip and was afraid serious arthritis was setting in.  I think I might be on the right track now because the pain is gone, replaced by soreness in both hips.  But it’s the kind of soreness that makes you appreciate the hard work you put in the day before.

Forty-five minutes on the mat.  Days 3-7 found me nursing nagging aches and pains.  I didn't think I’d been pushing myself that hard, so began to worry that something else, like Lyme Disease, was going on.  Mostly because my husband recently was diagnosed with it.  But yesterday I woke up feeling no pain.  Then I got on the mat, tried a new sequence of poses I read about in Yoga Journal, and woke up today with an entirely different set of aches and pains.

Thirty-five minutes on the mat.  I was trying to get a bunch of things done and, admittedly, also procrastinating about getting down to yoga when I noticed that the day was slipping away.  Then I remembered that I really and truly only needed to put in 10 minutes on the mat.  That made the “ordeal” seemed so manageable, I burst through my mental barriers and got it done.  I might start asking myself to do just 10 minutes of other things I really ought to do.

Fifty minutes on the mat.  And a week straight of yoga.  I don’t think I’ve ever done yoga for that many days in a row.  Baby steps supposedly add up.  We’ll see.

Thirty-five minutes on the mat. Can’t remember exactly what my practice consisted of yesterday, but it was enough to gift me with some aching muscles today.  That hasn’t happened in a while, so good for me.

Forty-five minutes on the mat today.  That’s starting to feel like the right amount of time for a daily practice, but have to keep reminding myself that my Lenten resolution was merely to get in at least 10 minutes a day.  If I begin expecting more, I’m doomed.  That much I know.

My hips are a bit sore--from working them hard, I think (and pray).  Haven’t seen marked improvement in any particular pose, but getting on the mat stopped feeling like a chore.  Since Fat Tuesday, my sleep has been a series of starts and stops.  But I’ve felt energetic right up until bedtime.  At times my mind has seemed clearer, but then I’ll walk into a room, find myself unable to remember why I was there.  Not sure if any of this has to do with the yoga.

Forty-five minutes on the mat. Without thinking, dove right into my usual, hour-long practice.  Woke up to it about 15 minutes in and then got flexible, mixing up pose sequence, adding some new ones.  Time flew by.

Remembered several times during today’s practice what my body was like when I first came back to yoga, about five or six years ago.  The change is most noticeable during Warriors I and II because I can raise both arms freely overhead now, forearms even with ears.  My shoulders and upper back, still far from loose, almost do what’s asked of them.  Felt very grateful for small mercies.