I heart yoga

I’ve never been a big fan of exercise in groups. I was a clumsy, unathletic child and I’ve never really gotten rid of that view of myself, so it’s embarrassing to be uncoordinated in a room full of people and walls lined with mirrors. It’s rather discouraging to be next to the girl with 8% body fat who gets every move just right and never seems to sweat while I am huffing and puffing with sweat dripping off my beet red face, trying to figure out why I’m facing right when everyone else is facing left.

But, I managed to get past all that enough to start going to a yoga class, despite the fact that I’m feeling rather chubby these days. I wobble and cheat and check out the person next to me from the corner of my eye to see if I’m doing it right, but I love it. The lights are dim and the instructor is kind and accepting of what our bodies can and cannot do.

I find that it grounds me when nothing else will, which is good because my practice of centering prayer has been lackluster and frustrating the past few weeks, and I’ve felt stuck in general. I feel stupid writing about it being hard when I recently made grand pronouncements about how well I’m doing - and in the grand scheme of things, I am doing well. I’m just finding that as I reach new places of stability, things show up that I wasn’t strong enough to handle before. (My therapist says all that is healthy. He’s probably right, but I still sometimes find his optimism annoying when I would really like him to acknowledge that yes, I will probably die alone and the world is careening fast toward the apocalypse.)

But I digress. Doing yoga has been one of those little clicks over the past few months, when I can feel something snap into place way down deep. My body knows what I am carrying more than my brain, and I am finding that different kinds of body work are helping me work things out in ways my brain never could. My body remembers things, and I’m discovering that I carry certain kinds of trauma in particular parts of my body, bad things that are just now working themselves up to the surface of my skin. That may not make any sense to you, but trust me - some experiences sink all the way into our bones.

While my head is struggling a bit to figure things out, my bones are where things seem to make the most sense these days. Something about an hour of breathing and bending and stretching knocks me out of the “what to do next” loop in my brain, and by the end I can stand upright in the mountain pose and feel my feet attached to the ground beneath. I love being able to breathe deeply, and the “om” at the beginning and the end. I love being in a space that is about connecting to myself instead of improving myself.

I only wish yoga would make everything in my life snap into place….

Comments

[bobbie]

me too!

[Hugo]

My body remembers things, and I’m discovering that I carry certain kinds of trauma in particular parts of my body, bad things that are just now working themselves up to the surface of my skin. That may not make any sense to you, but trust me - some experiences sink all the way into our bones.

So true, so true -- perfectly put.