I thought I was doing really well on Tuesday. Last of the holiday packages mailed? Check. Requisite single container for the lunches Jake will take with him when he moves up to the big kids' preschool after the holidays finally located and purchased? Check. Checks deposited? Check, checks.
I was aware that in order to add a Target run to my list of accomplishments and still get to yoga class on time I'd have to hew closely to my shopping list. A slightly daunting prospect, perhaps, as my usual response upon entering a Target is to turn glassy eyed, start breathing through my mouth, and then head straight to diapers because that is the one thing I can remember I need amidst the expanse of stuff arrayed before me.
But I had my list. I had my yoga class to make. I had the one-two punch of a rapidly growing belly and Christmas week in a house full of good food and people eager to nourish the next family member to make yoga class an imperative.
Maybe, just maybe, I shouldn't have picked up the work call that came on my cell just as I was pulling into the Target parking lot. But, I reasoned, responsibilities must be upheld. Gifts must be paid for. And I had my list, for goodness sakes.
At least I can now say I have faced down the challenge of discussing demurrer and motions to compel arbitration while gazing with little comprehension at Dora the Explorer water slides (seasonal? apparently not), Barbie Wedding Day dolls (never, ever, ever will I buy such a thing for a little girl, no matter how much she begs), and something I thought was called Disney Huggables, which I have just spent way too much time trying to track down online and seems not to exist. Except in the toy aisles of Target while you are trying to have an intelligent legal conversation in which you hope to convince your client it is worth paying you money for your cogent, if slightly distracted, opinions.
Eventually, my conversation was over, but my shopping was not. I ditched my cart and ran through the aisles, snatching hard-to-find items like a hole punch and non-Christmasy wrapping paper off the shelves as I rushed by with impressive speed for a pregnant woman.
Naturally I picked the checker who informed me she was closed, and naturally I hit the wrong button when signing for my credit card at the checker who was open, sapping precious minutes from my commuting time.
But finally I plunked myself in my car, slightly sweaty and very shaky. I looked at the clock. Eleven minutes until the start of yoga. Eleven minutes and a stretch of road going right past the Mall a week and a half before Christmas.
Naturally I started to cry.
When Something So Good for You Turns So Bad
The irony of my toddler-like breakdown was not lost on me.
I needed my yoga class, after all, to get a little bit of release in the holiday time crush. I needed space to be with myself and without my obligations, to breathe, to center. My response to missing this one day of class showed me that maybe, just maybe, the classes aren't helping much.
There is, I reflected a bit later while trying to ignore the part of my mind whining that I'd never get as good a practice in at home, a treacherous terrain between being committed to my yoga and trampling all over the truths I am there to learn. I attribute yoga with instilling in me an understanding of surrender, of admitting that I am not in control, of accepting myself with all my limitations and opening myself up to all life offers.
This understanding, it seems, becomes a great deal less comprehensive when I have to surrender to the fact that I missed yoga class, admit that I can not control the time, accept my somewhat awkward-feeling body and open myself up to the other possibilities brought by suddenly having an hour and half free that I thought I would be spending in yoga class.
If I was a Type A+ personality before I discovered yoga, I wondered, am I really any mellower than maybe a Type A- these seven-and-a-half years later?
There are, in life, so many things we think we have to do. If we're lucky, some time in our thirties we begin to sort out what's really important and what is merely an itch we must scratch out of some compulsion that no one cares about but ourselves.
And then, if we're also lucky, we have kids. And we learn what it's really like to have things we have to do.
True, we figure it out all over again—when it is important to have our child sit down at dinner with us every night and when it is not worth fighting the battle over whether he must wear a coat he refuses to wear even though it is 40 degrees outside. And yet, where our kids are concerned it's a whole lot harder to capitulate to not being able to do it all.
Far easier to capitulate to not being able to do our stuff.
Which is about where I was when I started writing YogaMamaMe. Because I had given up so much of my stuff for Jake's stuff that I didn't quite know who I was. And the first place I turned to find myself again was yoga. It's where I found myself the first time and I believe deeply in the truths it teaches—about stripping away the shoulds and the external ideas of what life is and learning to find what our hearts really desire.
So I found myself some local yoga classes. And I committed to them. Never mind that they meet at the truly inconvenient time of 12:15. Never mind that by the time I get home, eat lunch, and shower, I barely have another hour available to get work done before I guiltily rush into Jake's school, frequently the last parent to arrive and of late the very last to leave. (Like revelers at a party, Jake and I seem incapable of tearing ourselves away from the fun until we are helping the teachers turn off the lights and lock the doors.)
I need my yoga classes. Mike confirms that, yes, I need my yoga classes. And, on the days when I find myself not leaving the house except to drop Jake off and pick him up, I know I need my yoga classes to remind myself that I am a social and sentient being.
All this is fine. It's good. It's finding something important to me and clinging to it despite the other pressures in life that threaten to take me away from it and thus from my center.
The problem that arose in the Target parking lot, however, was that I suddenly felt like I couldn't live without it. Like a person with a broken leg who has her crutch rudely pulled out from under her, I crashed to the ground, helpless, humiliated, and going nowhere.
It's the Practice, Stupid
What really happens when any one of us does our version of broken-legged crashing to the ground is a sudden and jolting loss of perspective.
All I saw was that my yoga class was gone and I was huge and unwieldy and cranky and had utterly lost my anchor. It didn't matter that I could and would practice at home—it was this very concept, after all, that was making me cranky. It didn't matter that another class awaited the following day—it didn't challenge me the way this one would. It didn't matter that in the long run it makes no difference whether I miss a day of yoga—because, after all, I told the other mom from Jake's school who takes that class that I would be there, and what would she think when I wasn't?
And, suddenly, what I really saw was someone who was everything yoga has taught me not to be. Fixated. Hard on myself. Most definitely not relaxed and centered and open.
What I completely lost sight of were all the ways in which I am relaxed and centered and open. Maybe not at that particular moment. But, come on, who is all the time?
I recall a story told by one of the residents of the ashram where I did my yoga teacher training. An utterly relaxed, almost taciturn man, he recounted a family visit he took with his wife. His parents, no doubt a bit alarmed at their son's choice to live on an ashram, become a vegetarian, and grow his hair and beard to look what their generation surely thinks of as hippie-like, questioned him at length about his relaxed approach to life. How could he really surrender to everything? they wondered. Didn't anything bother him?
It's out of my control, he replied. Once I understand that, I can maintain my calm.
And then, the morning for departure arrived. He and his wife were, I believe, under a bit of a deadline and had to get on the road immediately. But his car wouldn't start. I don't remember the details of the diagnosis, or whether he even mentioned them. But he lost his cool completely. Cursed for the first time in months, if not years. Turned red in the face. Yelled a little bit.
"Not so easy to maintain your calm now, is it?" his father grinned. And what I remember most was the self-deprecating grin on his own face as he told us about it.
So, yeah, I lost a bit of perspective there in the Target parking lot. But it doesn't mean, as I concluded, that I've learned nothing from yoga, that I'm still just that Type A+ lawyer with yoga pants thrown over her suit and only seemingly carefree afternoons at the playground masking a deep need to work neurotically when no one's looking.
It means that sometimes we all lose it. Sometimes, even those of us with the strongest headstand fall over. Sometimes, those of us with the most open hamstrings can't touch our toes. And, sometimes, even a person far more practiced in the art of surrender than most of us can get really, really angry when his car won't start.
One of the loveliest, most forgiving things about yoga is that you are never merely what you are at one moment. You are always moving, even when you are being still. You are always making progress, as long as you remain committed to your practice, however you define it. It's only your mind that has the power to tell you otherwise.
And when you can quiet your mind for a while, you may recognize that there isn't a whole lot wrong with crying over missing a yoga class. Because eventually you will stop crying and go to a different one.
This is your practice.
A Shoulder-Opening Variation for Particularly Stressful Moments
I'm one of those neck-thrusters. You know, the people who, the more tense they get the more their chin starts to jut toward you in a slightly menacing approximation of a heat-seeking missile locking in on the nearest unfortunate target.
In other words, I hold most of my stress in my upper back and neck. Right between the shoulder blades, right in that spot that feels so darned good if I would just take a moment to take a break from squinting at the computer screen and let my head fall back and the front of my neck open up with a satisfying little crack of something in my cervical spine clicking into place.
Many of us hold tension in our lower backs, or our hands, or just about anywhere. But it seems like there's always some being stored between the shoulder blades.
For that reason, I offer today a variation you can add to several poses to open your upper back and shake the tension out of your shoulders. You can add it to uttanasana (standing forward fold) or, for more of a challenge, to Virabhadrasana I (Warrior I). Or you can just stand upright, with your legs hip distance apart, and do it with your clasped hands releasing heavily toward the floor. You can even do it, if you must, seated at a desk chair. I know because I just tried it.
"It" is: While standing upright, reach your arms behind you and clasp your hands together. Bend your elbows if necessary to bring your palms together. While this is more difficult to do than letting your palms separate, it is crucial for protecting your wrists. Even if your hands separate a bit as you move into the opening, just using the muscular energy to pull them toward each other will help protect your wrists.
Still clasping your hands and bending your elbows, perform a shoulder loop: up toward your ears, onto your back, and down your back toward the base of your spine. As you breathe deeply into the pose, let your sternum lift as if a helium balloon were attached to your heart, letting it gently float toward the ceiling.
Check in with your lower back to make sure it is not curving instead of your upper back. Pull your navel in toward your spine and let your tailbone reach toward the ground.
Then breathe into the tightness in your upper back and exhale through your nose, letting the tension release with your breath. Continue to breathe mindfully in this way and stay here for as long as it feels good or try adding this to another pose.
Mostly, though, use it for a quick tension release whenever. Except maybe if you're already in the car, crying as you drive away from your missed yoga class.
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