Big Expectations and Little Victories: Part 1

Monday night's Yoga Nidra really put a kink in my plans. My 40-day plan, that is.

For the first half of this challenge, I had done a pretty good job of putting aside my doubt and frustration, choosing my intentions at the beginning of class carefully (it is almost always "I am here for me"), and ignoring a growing sadness in my chest, a dissappointment in myself. You see, it's been a long time since I've had to learn something new and practice patience in the length of time it takes to learn something new. I grew up a dancer and for years I danced and I was good at it. I was so young when I started, I don't remember struggling to be good at it. I played a musical instrument almost my entire childhood and though I struggled sometimes, for the mostly part it came quite naturally to me. Same with the work in my adult life. When I fell into the work I have done for 12 years now, I knew it was meant for me and even with the detours I've taken, it's always been a second nature.

I feel like yoga is right for me. I have the same sense as I did as a dancer, a musician and now a fundraiser. But yoga. Yoga is a completely opposite practice of anything else I've done. It is learned differently, in ways my body and mind have never been exposed to. It is the first big life-altering thing I've done that feels right in my soul, but my body doesn't seem to follow. In other words, this learning curve is much bigger than anything else I've learned in life. It's bigger than me, bigger than life itself.

Like I've said before, we're told and we read that one person cannot achieve perfection in yoga in their lifetime. And while I love the idea of always being a student of yoga, never being bored, falling into the same mundane routine, always learning something new that is rewarding and fulfilling, I have found myself at a hard point in this practice. Yoga Nidra got in my head. It got in my HEAD. And while I realize this is the purpose of it, I couldn't have anticipated the effects of it after just one class.

My regular Tuesday beginner's series class was really tough on me. I felt off, overwhelmed, distracted. It was also the night we were taught Camel Pose (Ustrasana). The camel pose opens up the Heart Chakra and is associated with love and inner emotions (hope, fear, despair, envy, compassion, anger.) According to Lexi Yoga, camel pose results in "a rush of enporphins and a flush of emotions." I hadn't even moved into the modified, prop-supported camel pose fully when I felt a very unfamiliar and overwhelming feeling in my chest and had to pull myself out and sit in child's pose while the rest of class practiced camel pose. Intense.

In previous posts, I've written about a few emotional experiences I've had so far, such as with the gong. But what is happening right now isn't a one-time thing. It's as if there are many layers to this journey and before Yoga Nidra, I'd barely scratched the surface. Yoga Nidra peeled back a really thick layer that was hiding self-doubt, regret, fear, and dissapointment.

To be continued...

Day 11 -or- The Day I Cried Through Yoga Class

Today was a shit day. It's my blog. I can say shit.

Someone I care about really hurt my heart and all day I carried that pain with me. I cried all day at work and I HATE crying at work. By the end of the day, I was trying to come up with excuses to not go to yoga class. I didn't want to be around people. I wanted beers, maybe a cigarette. Driving home I remembered that this was one of the classes in my beginner's series I had missed last session. So I went.

The stress of the day caused a flare in my joints. Downward-facing dog made my wrists feel like they were going to crack in half. Tree pose was a massive FAIL. My lips were trembling like a little child who lost their blankie while I was trying to not cry. Then we did the Pigeon Pose. Oh, Pigeon Pose, how you slay me. I lost it. I could not stop those tears. The thing about Pigeon Pose is, you're there for quiet a while. It's a very emotionally detoxing pose. I guess it served it's purpose for me, but I'm fairly certain Matt (the new guy from a couple of posts back) thought I was a little nuts. I saw him glance at me. (Sorry, Matt!)

I don't feel better and my heart still hurts. But yoga was there for me when I needed it, even though I didn't want it. What I wanted was a night full of beers and cigarettes. What I needed was yoga. I remember this quote, but I don't remember where I read it:

"The universe will give us exactly what we need, exactly when we need it."

Namaste.

The Universe is Against Me

At least that's what it feels like.

I guess I had the expectation that starting a solid yoga/meditation practice would be smooth as silk. I am realizing very quickly that I did not factor in the emotional and physical challenges I may encounter, or that little bumps in the road which would normally occur would seem mountainous during this time of transition. As if ever a flat tire on MoPac was considered a "little bump."

This post is mostly about how body and mind are quickly (or perhaps not quickly enough) adjusting to these changes.

My sleep is affected. When I went to sleep last night, I noticed I was shaky, like when I've been really sleep deprived or have low blood sugar. I felt the same way when I woke up this morning. And although my internal alarm clock went off at 7am, I stayed in bed another half hour to give my body extra time to adjust and relax. I did my meditation and half way through tears started streaming down my face and I was overcome with sadness. This same thing happened to me last night too, when I was in the middle of doing nothing and thinking about nothing inparticular. I decided to spend the remainder of my time meditating on these feelings and by the end, I decided the emotions behind the tears and sadness felt like I was in mourning. I am familiar with the emotion and certainly with recent happenings over the last few months, I am not surprised by my need to mourn in my own way and in my own time. But what I think is actually happening is that my subconscious mind is taking this opportunity to "detox", if you will, all of the stuff I've stored there and not yet dealt with. And I'm convinced that the physical stuff I'm experiencing (shaking and fatigue) are side effects of the emotional dumping my subconscious mind (or my second mind) is doing.

We read that yoga is really so much more than the physical Asanas. There is a spiritual-emotional component which is bigger that the sum of all other parts of yoga and to understand its affect before we experience it is impossible. It is why when during this new practice of yoga and meditation everything seems bigger, badder, and more complicated than it really is, that our bodies begin to detox not only the toxicity of our physical self, but also our emotional self.

My biggest lesson today is this: When I wake up shaky, cry during meditation, change my outfit three times, and have a flat tire on MoPac: even though it feels like it, the universe is actually NOT against me. It's there saying "I'm here to support you when everything seems mountainous. You'll never be met with more than you can handle. In the end, you'll be stronger."

And to the Universe I say, "Thanks for being there for me, Universe. But I'm pretty sure you could have gotten your point across without the flat tire."

Namaste.