i’m coming off a string of days home with a sick toddler, which at first may not seem like the most “yoga-y” experience, except that it was.
last wednesday i was on my way to a mid-afternoon yoga class–it had been a hectic day/week/month–when i got a call telling me that my foster son “wasn’t feeling well and was puking and on his third bout of diarrhea in the last hour and could i please come pick him up”? so i turned my Prius around.
later, across town a warm room filled with people and a teacher was telling them to focus on their breath and let go of whatever had happened in their day before they got to their mat. telling them this was exactly where they needed to be.
exactly where i needed to be was apparently my couch, with a semi-conscious two-year-old sprawled on top of me, and Blaze and the Monster Machines blaring on my phone.
my neck hurt and i was dreading the inevitable screams that would follow when i had to stand up and go pee or use my phone for anything other than temporary toddler numbing.
and on and off that’s sort of how i felt all weekend. trapped and fearful of some anticipated discomfort or conflict yet to come. that’s where the yoga comes in.
if you’ve ever taken one of my classes you’ve probably heard me say:
we do hard things on the mat so we can do hard things off the mat.
i love this phrase and the principle behind it. i love it in part, because like so many things in yoga, initially, i missed the point.
at first, my ego driven self wanted to take this phrase and apply it exclusively to cool or exciting hard things. like i should try to do crow pose in class so i can be brave and take on new challenges in my life outside of yoga.
it wasn’t until i started learning and training in yin yoga that i realized it also means practicing surrender. and acceptance. and stillness.
and unlike the “cool exciting” hard things–the big test, the reach publication, the new job–these “boring ordinary” hard things are there every day. every day i can practice letting go and accepting what is. every day i can look for moments of stillness and strive for peace. every day i can choose where to focus my attention.
listen, before you start resenting me (because that’s probably what i would be doing right about now) my practice of surrender and acceptance and stillness is deeply imperfect. remember when i said “i felt trapped and fear-filled on and off all weekend?” yeah, well, that wasn’t a lie. i also felt frustrated and deeply bored. and tired. i got in a legitimate several-hour-long feud with a two-year-old who barely has a prefrontal cortex because he wouldn’t take a nap.
those things are true. and it is true that on saturday afternoon the clouds were low and heavy and full of light. and the river that twists through this city? it was rushing to the horizon. and on a bridge over all that moving water a very small person with very small legs wanted to first run and then be carried. and we had nowhere to be for hours. and on the west bank there is a grove of trees that to everyone else was just a landscaping feature, but to him, it was a forest.
and even inside those few hours of beauty there was a struggle to remain present, a rising desire to rush–because these simple dependable hard things are just that: hard.
but the cool thing about practice is that i get to keep trying, even when i’m really bad at it. and the cool thing about focusing on these ordinary boring hard things is that now when “life–like stomach flus and traffic and unexpectedly high electric bills–happens” on my better days, i can stop and feel genuinely grateful for the opportunity to practice how i respond. for the chance to choose.
So good, thank you
Thank you! I hear your voice from yoga practice- “begin again” when I struggle with writing in particular.
Appreciate you sharing the hard things-providing more tools for these times.