yoga diary - day twelve

Down day.

I don't mean that in any bad sense but if you're a woman, there are going to be two or three days a month where some things are out of your reach. For me, today, it's yoga and the sweat lodge I had hoped to attend.

For the sake of anyone who reads this and only knows the news stories about "sweat lodges," that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about a traditional First Nations sweat held in the country, supervised by Elders and not ever arduous much less harmful. If you can't take it, you can leave the lodge. You do not fast for days in advance and you feast afterwards. It is a kind of cleansing and it's tied deeply to the land. Women in "their moon" are filled up with energy that is powerful and pretty chaotic so traditionally we do not participate in sweats or other ceremonies when that's going on.

Same is true of yoga. That's enough said about the nitty gritty. The question for today becomes then, how do you carry on a daily practice when your body has limitations?

I don't want to go entirely without it in case I break the habit and lose ground, however there is no question that physically it's not something I can do today. I slept in for one thing. Then fooled around much more than I should have on the computer. Had breakfast, talked to a friend and then finally settled in here.

The lack of discipline in every aspect of my life except yoga is beginning to eat away at me. Working for yourself, you can go through phases where you do exactly what you have to do and not much more. This leads to anxiety and all sorts of other complications - the mind gets noisy and you end up desperately seeking peace anywhere you can find it and at the same time being sort of garrolously eager to pounce on social and potential networking situations. It's uncomfortable and unattractive. (And I had cake for breakfast so I feel doubly gross and lazy.)

Alright - no yoga to help me so I have to do the yoga in my mind and in my breathing.

Singing helps, to a point. Doing all the mundane household stuff helps too. Trying not to worry though, well, actually getting beyond worry, that helps the most. Singing can get my beyond worry for a while and if it's challenging enough it helps my breathing. But worry will stop me dead in my tracks.

I'm not thinking of yoga in terms of moving anything but the weight off my body. I like the idea that it is calming and so far, my muscles seem a bit more defined but people do ascribe an awful lot to the practice and so far, to be honest, all I seem to have gotten from it that way is a sense of guilt and alarm at how easy it is to slide into being unproductive.

Maybe I'll come back to this. The desk isn't helping.