I know I’m in trouble when I start getting sick, particularly getting sick with weird little things. I am pretty in tune with my body and when I get tired, my nose runs. It’s like somewhere in the early part of my existence my brain noticed that I would lay down and rest when my nose ran, and that got programmed in. Along the way I’ve gotten to know many other things… one of which is that when I do my yoga practice almost every day, I don’t get sick. And I have to acknowledge a few other things with that bold sentence.
First for full clarity – I am speaking to the physical asana practice. That is a moving meditation for me, so I do not hold the firm lines that some do. I stay physically healthy when I move my body. I stay mentally healthy when I move my body. When I’m doing my yoga practice almost every day, it’s a sign of other things I’m doing in my life being prioritized well – it’s not just yoga. In a quick sentence it sounds like this: When I am going to yoga I am also resting enough and eating well and feeling enough order in my life to carve out the time for my practice. And in that way my practice is often an indication of a lot of bigger things happening
The reality is complex. When I know I’m not getting enough sleep, I choose sleep over yoga. When I know things are super busy, I choose to take the time to eat over getting a few extra minutes of shut eye. When I have big important deadlines, I work that in first ahead of just about everything else. And there begins the spiral where many, many things are happening, but my practice of yoga is all too often one of the first things that slips. I don’t know a lot for sure, but I do know with certainty that I am not alone in this, and so here’s a little of my truth.
- I’m not great at my personal practice (as in my personal, at home practice). There is a lot of judgement on this out in social media and I ignore all of it. I spend almost all my time thinking about, working on, and offering yoga from meditation to warm power flows and everything in between. So, when it’s time to practice I just want to let my brain go and have someone else tell me what to do.
- I love yoga studios, and I spend a lot of time in them and sometimes I’m just ready to go after I teach. I imagine if you work at Target, you don’t necessarily want to spend more time at Target just wandering the aisles when you are done working. Cue “cry me a river” as my pity party begins.
- Even though I offer online classes, I don’t like to take them. I need to be in the room where it happens.
- I’m not exempt from complaining about my schedule, even if I made my schedule all by myself. I want to go to yoga, and yet… there are popular times for classes to be taught, and as a full-time teacher I tend to teach at times other teachers are also teaching. Refer to #2 and 3 for why this is a problem.
I don’t love anything about having written out the above. I sound whiney to myself and hypocritical that I love yoga so much it’s all I do but it’s also a thing I haven’t really been doing (up to this moment). And yup – I’ve been sick with one little thing after another for over a month now. Adding to the woes I haven’t been entirely public about I was nursing a shoulder injury for months. Nothing big, just a thing that (like the rest of me) needed rest and kept me from most of the physical practice I wanted and needed.
Let’s dive into what’s happening with me a little more. I want to say yes to everything. I want to offer every class, workshop, and retreat. I want to take every training. I want to sub for every person who needs it. I love Love LOVE what I do, and I say yes in all my enthusiasm and then later when all the things I said yes to are all on top of each other I have to recognize that sometimes it’s just too much.
Often, I check my calendar for a specific date and time, and if it’s open I plug the thing in. I don’t always take that slightly pulled back view that shows me there might be an issue with a lot of things already in play around that time – and I tend to leave little margin for error or comfort. The specific hour or two is not usually the issue – it might be the weekend or the week before or the week after that would show me this is a time I really needed to hold open.
I own that – I say yes to a lot of things with my optimistic mind, and not necessarily with a full view. Even though I adore everything I’ve been doing, I was getting close to burnt out when pairing everything that had been manageable with a few family things that did not fall into place as quickly or easily as I imagined over the last 6-8 months (and guess what, they are still ongoing). I designed a schedule with no buffer for those kinds of things that my adult brain knows will regularly happen. I’m beginning to see exactly how problematic it is to not have schedule buffers and I don’t see a lot of conversation that speaks specifically to that need.
This all culminated in a longer than I care to admit (and still in progress) time where I regularly find myself unwell – a migraine here, an infection there, a lost voice. Deep breaths.
I needed a nap. I needed a moment to sort through my own head and find clarity. I needed to reset and align what I was doing with what really feels most important to me. And I needed to watch some trashy TV and let my mind have a buffer to do absolutely nothing.
So that’s where I’m at. It’s not been particularly pretty here. I’ve not launched things and not promoted things and put things on pause because my body said in every way it knows how that I needed to pull back. I haven’t sent e-mails, haven’t called people, and have reminded myself 100 times a day that I’m a yoga teacher, and yoga emergencies aren’t really a thing.
I’ve spent a few days where I barely got out of bed. I’ve taken to heart some great shares from friends. I’ve made more space for friendship. I’ve made more space for art and creativity. I’m going on a retreat for me – before I host one again for others. And I’m finding a flow in my life with buffers and the options I always offer every student. I made the edge I was living on, and the great news is that means I can unmake the edge.
It’s time to unroll my mat.