You may not know this but I am a qualified Vinyasa Flow yoga teacher.
This is because I am a bad yogi and I am always in a love-hate relationship with my own practice.
I can hold my hands up here and say that I haven’t practiced with any kind of regularity for the past eighteen months.
So, what happens when we don’t practice something? (and when I say “we,” you know I really mean I).
We become out of practice and then we become a little more out of practice. And then we start to worry about just how out of practice we are and we eat another slice of pizza and try to think about something else.
Eventually, as the weeks pass, we realise that we have to get off out bloody arse and just do the damn yoga practice, but now it has been months of denial and pizza eating and our hamstrings are tight and we get short of breath easily.
It’s almost like being back at the beginning. And, let’s face it, the beginning sucks.
Being new at anything requires a tremendous amount of bravery. We have to accept not being as good as we’d like to be. We have to keep practicing with faith that results will follow. Not always an easy thing with something like flexibility or say, art, where we are taught to believe that ability is something we are born with….or not, in my case.
Anyway, when I was at my most practiced as a yogi I had a nemesis pose. You know, the one that just hurts like hell…..like every time. And no matter how hard you practice, no matter how many times you get yourself into that pose, it just never seems to get any better. Mine was Hanumanasana (Monkey Pose). Most of us know this pose as the splits. When I was a diligent yogi, I practiced this pose every day. Every day. And I never seemed to get very far.
I’d always end up in a very inelegant semi split, with my hands on blocks at the side, trying to gently encourage my legs to go further, secretly terrified that my front leg would slip and I would rip my hamstrings. Occasionally I would get a little further. But it wasn’t looking likely that I would ever reach the floor.
So, after eighteen months of sporadic yoga practice and no Hanumanasana at all, I was feeling very dispirited because I knew that when I eventually got back to my practice, I would be right back at the beginning again.
I just couldn’t face day after day of struggling in that goddamn pose…so I avoided it. I ate pizza (a LOT of pizza) and I watched Pointless. I worked 12 hours a day on my business so I couldn’t find time for yoga.
When I did occasionally practice, I skipped Hanumanasana every time. No way did I have the energy for that. But eventually, last night, as I was trying out a new yoga podcast, the teacher snuck in a quick Hanumanasana and, instead of skipping over it, I finally gave it a go. I was prepared for it to be a totally miserable suckfest but, actually, it was just the same as the last time I did it.
Let me say that again. It was just the same. After EIGHTEEN months, it was just the same.
I hadn’t gone back ten steps and I wasn’t doing the worst Hanumanasana ever. It wasn’t better, it wasn’t worse. I was back in the same place I had been before I left.
I put it down to muscle memory and I think it works the same way every time we expand, whether it’s our body, our creativity or our bravery. When we have a setback, we think we are right back at the beginning again but that’s just not the case.
Once you have expanded, there’s no going back. We just don’t fit back into the box any more.
How cool is that?
No more worrying that we can’t do it any more. No more worrying that we got distracted and screwed it up. Just the opportunity to get back to it without any drama.
When you’re ready to come back, your own personal Hanumanasana (whatever it is) will be right there waiting for you. Just as it was. For me, there’s something very comforting about that.