Day 3: Coming Back

Yesterday was initially not great, as I kind of said in my Day 2 blog. I woke up hormonal and feeling very pregnant after less than 4 hours of sleep for the third night in a row. It’s my first real week back at gym and everything hurts. I don’t know my body anymore and Little Bean has taken over all my biological systems. My emotions are not my own. My body feels like it’s not my own.

This is particularly unsettling because I am a person who knows myself. Like I really know myself. And since being pregnant, I just…don’t. Normally it’s all good and I can deal, but there was something about yesterday that made it more difficult than usual. Which, for obvious reasons, contributed to my morning practice being not so great.

I had thoughts of “Why do I keep thinking I can do this? Obviously I can’t do this. Look at me. I can’t even just sit up straight with my legs out in front of me because I’m that stiff and inflexible. Become a yoga teacher one day? Am I insane? What was I thinking?” Since yoga is almost more mental than physical, that didn’t exactly help things.

But then, in the afternoon, my new fusion mat unexpectedly arrived from Sentiens. Like a gentle little “shut up, of course you can do this” present. So I got onto the mat (which is glorious and amazing by the way) and I did some restorative yoga, and you know what? It was actually incredible.

I stayed with my breath the whole time and I managed to do all the poses while keeping the flow. I even challenged myself a little on one of the transitions and managed to do that, too. And I stayed. With. My. Breath.

And today, that’s all I want. No pressure of doing a specific video, just…coming back to my breath and my mat and my body. Just that. And I can definitely do that. Because now that I’ve found my breath, even this one time, I want to keep finding it again and again until I don’t have to go looking for it anymore.

-firebird

Day 2: Just Breathe

Why is breathing such a thing for me? I didn’t intend on making that my center, or the theme of this blog, but apparently that’s what’s on my mind. Breathing.

I think it’s because I’ve always struggled with letting myself just…breathe. Just be. Be who I am and who God made me, not who other people want me to be. I guess I’m lucky that I’m getting to this place now, at 26, and not only in my 50s or 60s like some people. And even so, I suppose it’s all still a journey anyway.

But yes. Breathing. I think it’s one of the most beautiful things about yoga – the focus on breath. You don’t realize how constricted and disconnected your breathing is from you, and you from it, until you try doing yoga. Suddenly you’re aware that you’re so out of sync with yourself that you don’t even breathe right. Like your breath catches somewhere – throat, lungs, mouth – somehow it’s just not flowing. And yoga is about the flow, after all. In. Out. Strength. Flow. Breath. Just breathe.

So today, that was my goal. Just. Breathe. Even if all the poses are messed up (and believe me, they are), just breathe. Just. Breathe.

Good thing, since I couldn’t even finish the Day 2 video. Apparently 15 minutes is my limit at the moment. To be fair, I’ve only slept about 6 hours in the last two days, and it’s our first real week of gym so my body is (painfully) remembering the existence of muscles it had totally forgotten about. Maybe it was a little ambitious of me to want to start gym AND yoga in the same week.

But I’m glad I showed up. I don’t feel great about my practice today, but I did what I could. My breathing was deeper, though still not totally connected, and I did a few poses satisfyingly well. Tomorrow is another day, and I’ll breathe again. And again. And again. Until I’m part of the beautiful flow.