I refer to my yoga practice a lot, but I don't write about it in detail. I don't think I will going forward either, because it's my intense personal interest and let's face it, unless you're seeking it out, other people's hobbies or exercise routines or, god, diets are boring as ballz. Like, I do not care to read about food unless it's written by Ruth Reichl or Anthony Bourdain or Deb from Smitten Kitchen. Those are food writers. There are also already tons of nutrition writers and fitness writers and yoga writers and spiritual writers and I will leave them to it. I don't fancy myself a guru or expert and I don't want to. But since yoga has reclaimed its role as a major part of my life over the past two years, I do owe it a little airtime.
If I could, I would go to a class every single day. It's long been a dream of mine to take on yoga teacher training, and I do believe it will happen some day, like maybe whenever those sweet lottery winnings come in, or way down the road. If I'm the Grandma Moses of certified yoga teachers, I can live with it. That's one of the most beautiful and appealing things about the practice, to me, that it's for life and that it's evolutionary. As it stands right now, I get to class 2-3 times per week, and do a little tinkering at home, but rarely engage in a full practice. I like what I get out of class, the hands-on adjustments and the teacher expertise. I always look forward to attending, it's never an activity that makes me drag my feet to get there. Once there I'm often met with challenges, and I am able to meet them, or not, depending on my mental and physical state, but I don't stress about what they might be beforehand. That's a major thing that yoga has done for me - the thing I want to write about - really helping me to live in the moment, something with which I habitually struggle.
There is one teacher in particular who is a stickler for form and for making every second count, wasting no thought or movement, but living with absolute intention. I resisted her at first, only going to her class as a last resort, because when you're holding forearm plank for a hundred years and she won't stop going on about integrity and not just getting through life's tough or unpleasant parts but learning to live WITH them, really you just want to scream at her. Ah, but if that isn't the trick of it. Of course she's my favorite now, of course she is. She kicks my physical butt in a different and surprising way every time I get to her class, but beyond the mat, the lessons I've taken from her, really apply to everyday life.
Let me tell you about my broken dishwasher for a sec. In my adult life, I've always had a dishwasher. Unless I'm camping, I thought I was pretty much free of the burden of washing dishes by hand 4 lyfe. But our decade-old dishwasher started giving us trouble late in the spring, and we've been away, and got busy with things, and we never even got a repairman to look at it until a couple of weeks ago, then he needed a part, then he was on vacation, I mean, get to the point, girl: we've been doing dishes by hand and it sucks. Well, it sort of sucks. My house is democratic with regard to housework, and for something like dishes, it's basically whoever can get to them first. The division sort of works itself out. And some nights when Mike has to get to work right after dinner and then I do bedtime with HR and then I go down to the kitchen and the dishes are there, sticking up their middle fingers at me. When you're just ready for downtime, the old take-em-out-back-and-skeet-shoot solution sounds pretty good. But then you get into it. And sometimes you zone out and power through. Or, as I've started to recently, you can apply the yoga lesson. The dishes have to be done, and the time you spend doing it is still time. A limited commodity, no matter how it's spent. So I have a choice. I can actively hate the chore, or engage in escapist thought to make it go faster. Or, OR, I can sit in my discomfort. Acknowledging that sure, I'd rather be on the couch, but this is what's going on right now, for this set of moments that I'm alive, for these moments I won't get back, I can inhabit them as a person doing the dishes. The same result any way you look at it. But it makes a difference, to me. The subtle mindset tweak. It's just an example of the way that something I sought out as physical exercise has made a measurable impact on my whole being.
The other story that I'm telling you, woven invisibly but glaringly throughout, is the story of my privilege. How I can get the funds and time together to go to classes, which I acknowledge are not cheap or always conveniently timed. How I have a dishwasher in the first place and hot running water and a solid roof over my head. My little bitchlings make you roll your eyes, I get it, I'd probably be the same. Even acknowledging this, even the gratitude I express, is a luxury, the time to think about it, the idea of comparing it hypothetically to other circumstances. I'm not blind to it. But my life is my life, this is what I do and what makes me tick. And I want to live it with intention as much as possible. Yoga is helping with that. Sure it's good for my body in a lot of ways that I enjoy and don't discount at all, but the effect on my psyche has been indescribable and sort of set me on the quest, in my midlife anxiety times, to be a mindful, present mother and wife and writer and worker and person in the world. It's a set of tools, not just a coping strategy in tough times or even a self-calming device when the mental horse gallops out of the barn (though those are welcome side effects), but, when I put my mind to it, it gives me the ability to not fight the moment that I'm in, to refrain from wishing things away, and instead to see everything for what it is, and try to meet it with grace.
I'll never be perfect at this. That's not the goal. And I'm still going to do the Myposian Dance of Joy when that dishwasher is repaired. I still occasionally curse out that one teacher in my head when she's doing her thing and my triceps are electrified jelly. But this way of looking at things has emerged as my unexpected reward. It wasn't exactly what I was looking for when I went back to the mat, it wasn't the specific thing I was craving if I could even have identified it, but it's what I got and damn if it isn't working for me.