Sunday is my one day off from working out, my rest day (though it is often chaotic and stressful in other ways), but my body and mind haven’t felt good doing nothing. I don’t get to sleep in with a toddler anyway, and getting up to exercise tries to ensure that I can get a shower before I have to get her up. Plus, it’s my only time alone all day. So I needed to find something to do.
So a few days ago, it just popped into my head: yoga. I’ll try yoga. No idea why. It has never really appealed to me; I haven’t seen the merits, haven’t viewed it as good exercise, because exercise is about sweating and burning calories, right?
Yoga is for hippies, yuppies, and millennials. Soccer moms who want the excuse to wear skin-tight pants all day with their hair in a ponytail.
Not for me.
So I’m not sure why I thought to try it.
But I did. I consulted an old friend about where to start, got a recommendation for a YouTube channel, Yoga with Adriene, woke up long before my alarm feeling anxious, so I got up anyway, dressed and came downstairs.
Yeah, our house is not set up for a yoga space. Shoving toys and furniture to the side is probably not what yoga instructors have in mind as warm up activities, but hey, it’s movement, right? Also, I kept bumping the Christmas tree, but we can call that “checking in with my body.”
(Yep, another branch in the butt. Check.)
I’ve always known I carry a lot of tension in my back and shoulders (in part from all the physical weight I used to carry, I’m sure), but holy crap, my back was killing me.
Pleasantly surprising, however, was the fact that I could do all the basic stretches and positions without shaking, sweating, or straining. “You might feel your arms start to shake here.” Nope, I’m good, actually, let’s keep going. Yeah, that felt good.
Gotta take pride where you can.
In an hour, my watch tells me I burned 71 calories. Not exactly a major effort, Basics for Beginners, but it’s a start.
The bigger thing happened about 45 minutes into my first yoga attempt. I did a 40-minute beginners session, then a 20-minute “Gentle Morning Yoga” session. Five minutes into the morning yoga, the instructor said the words, “I know we all have days ahead of us” and it hit me like an actual physical blow: I hadn’t thought about my day at all during that time. I was so focused on trying to copy her and trying to figure out how to connect with my body (because apparently that’s so easy), I wasn’t in my head. The demands, the expectations, the schedule, the tasks, the unbearable pressure that is every day of my life landed on me all at once.
And I shattered.
There was a flash of beauty where I realized I had been free of it, but then it was worse, when I realized just how heavy (and destructive) my life is to me.
“Well, that can’t be good,” I thought.
Yeah. I’m really good at understatement, apparently.
Now that I’m aware, I’m not sure what to do.
Except find time for my next yoga session and try to chase that feeling again.
Is this how drug addicts get started?
This has got to be better for my body than drugs, right?
Right.