yoga diary - day ten

This morning I was angry. I don't want to be doing yoga by myself in Ottawa. I don't want to be plodding ahead and being brave in the snow and ice by myself, trying to prove myself worthy of whatever it is I want and am not getting. I want to be in Austin, that's a fact.

Today yoga was about throwing myself at the practice and resenting it at the same time as digging into it to use up some of the angry energy that was sparking and volting through my body like contained lightning.

I started sweating almost immediately.

That surprised me because I've been doing this for nearly a month now and expect the sweat to come into it a little later every day, which has been the pattern so far and is, I think, the pattern with most strenuous exercise. Today, I was sweating five minutes into it - and it felt good.

The practice was hard but rewarding. I leaned into it. I felt myself tighten when I reached up in mountain pose, I pushed my heart out in cobra and for a second actually did feel like I was floating upward. I never believe yoga rhetoric, I listen respectfully and I follow the postures as closely as I can, I do the breathing as much as possible but I never believe I am going to feel the way the instructor says I should feel. Their descriptive phrases are almost always over my head.

My inner body is not "radiant" it does not "pause." I don't really feel the balance - I strain and struggle and wonder why my belly always seems to be in the way and if it will ever, ever allow me to do a real forward bend. I feel my arms start to tremble in downward dog and when I am asked to twist from a position of a low lunge? Well, sometimes I think that will simply never be possible.

Just the same, I was leaning into it today and thinking only about the physical cadence of breathing and moving, surging up and folding down. I think I was learning something about making an effort even when you really don't want to when my phone rang.

And rang and rang. I knew who it was and I wanted to answer but I ignored it. That made yoga even harder. I kept going.

I wanted to stop and check my phone but I kept going and pushing through my practice, waiting to let the world start until after I was finished with my routine. I made it and felt oddly calm and angry still, both at the same time. I guess resolute is the word I am looking for. (look at all the I's in those last two paragraphs, I'm really seated in myself right now, I guess)

So what am I learning here?

A few things. My anger stays inside me until I release it. Love does not reach me without my permission. The work doesn't end. I do this every day and every day it changes but it does not end, it's a wave that ebbs and flows, not a goal to arrive at.

Both physical fitness and mental clarity are hard, they are not made any easier by deciding to reach them by means of advanced practices in difficult situations.

Winter lasts forever.
(just like the moment we inhabit)