Old news in a new place: On Yoga

Before I left for a month of travel madness I made a list of things I was going to do with all this time I’d have. I was going to write, I was going to code, and I was going to read. I was going to run, and I was going to do some exercises to maintain fitness. I wasn’t going to knit. I wasn’t going to worry much about other things, if I could get away with it. The reality ended up a bit different. I did very little coding and writing time had to be wrested from circumstance. I did a lot of knitting. I set up a new job (which I am gleefully working now). And I did a whole lot of yoga.

Yoga is probably the most expensive physical activity available to westerners, and appears to be among the most ridiculous and pretentious. I started yoga in California, fittingly, during a time of stress. I wasn’t looking for a spiritual experience, I just wanted to stretch a bit for an hour a week. Had I gone to a studio for $20/class with an initial investment of another $20 for a mat and probably $20 for assorted clothes, I would not have made it past the first advice to breathe through my kidneys. Luckily the classes at my gym were free and they provided mats. I didn’t need to invest a single cent in practicing initially, so I could ignore the bits I thought were silly (chakras? really? It’s a room full of scientists and engineers…) and enjoy the stretching and strength training. With no excuses to keep me away from the practice, yoga slowly seeped into my soul.

Fast forward to April 2014. I’d been practicing about once a week at a studio up the street from me. When I found out there was a yoga studio across the street from where I was staying in DC, I signed up for a month of unlimited yoga and resolved to go as much as I could. I went twice in one day once, but most of the time I made it 2-3 times a week. I was amazed at how much I learned by forcing myself into a hot little room and twisting around on a mat for 60-90 minutes at a time.

Amanda Palmer described yoga as “The process of introducing your body to your mind.” This thought echoed through my head as I worked through the month. I was also running a lot more than I ever had before, and those hours on the mat showed me exactly what kinds of things happen when you run, or sit, or wear different shoes while tromping through airports. I learned what happens if you don’t drink enough water. And I noticed, in and out of the yoga studio, how things (very small things) were changing and progressing.

That kind of progress is delicious to see. Everyone grows and changes and gets better at what they do every day, but the progress is so tiny and incremental that it’s often impossible to see. We don’t get the luxury of looking back to notice, either, so we trundle on, looking forward at the next challenge. All that hemp-flavoured yoga talk, though, gives you a chance to settle into yourself and notice the changes. The act of being able to notice is interesting in itself, but the reward for doing it is being able to see the progress.

Noticing things leads to a lot of drama. There’s elation when you achieve something new. There’s frustration when something doesn’t work. And there is fury when something used to work but isn’t working today for whatever reason. When that happens all the hippy crunchy patter I tend to ignore is waiting with an explanation, often a sensible one, but more importantly there’s a solution: acceptance. If you’ve ever been to a yoga class you’ve probably heard something along the lines of “Notice where you are, listen to your body, and go as far as YOU need to go today.”

That might not sound like a solution, but it actually is. I have been gobsmacked to learn just how much you can fix with acceptance alone. Once you stop fighting certain kinds of things, they work themselves out. It works in yoga and elsewhere.

Acceptance is powerful. When someone loves you and accepts you, it creates space for growth and change. When you accept someone else and manage to convey it to them, you can watch them open up and lean into that light as well. This part of yoga gives you practice being on both the giving and receiving end, and you get the benefits of both.

When it works, of course. It usually doesn’t. No amount of acceptance was going to get me into my backbends on some days, and those days sucked. But, like the backbends, when it does work it’s glorious.

I don’t recommend yoga to people. Even when I’m lying elated on my mat, dripping sweat and revelling in having fixed some kind of sticky muscle problem, a tiny part of me is always aware that this looks and sounds ridiculous. I’ve read all that stuff about how twists are bad for you. I see people being self-conscious as they look around a room of yogis, and I’ve been really unimpressed to see some of the self-righteous cliques that form. I’ve injured myself in really stupid ways. And I’ve grimaced at the price of attending a studio where I can get pushed enough to make the time on the mat worthwhile. But it has built physical and mental strength for me in ten years of off-and-on practicing, and it was especially noticeable over a month of “as much yoga as I can get.” It was an unexpected benefit to the journey, and when I return to normal practice I hope to bring some of it with me.

Of course, when I got home I found out my yoga studio had burned down. My search for a replacement is ongoing.