Getting Deeper

(Cat, I’m just waiting for your dirty joke with this title, I’m aware…)

As I stepped onto the mat today, I stepped on with my ego in the way. It suffered a bruising recently, and my guard immediately went up. I’m pretty sure I was shooting “don’t touch me” vibes towards the lovely instructor.

I wanted to show that I knew exactly what I was doing. I wanted my form to be so good that it was obvious that I had just finished a yoga teacher training. When I’m trying so hard to do something right…I never do, and my balance was all kinds of off because I was so focused on being a teacher’s pet and listening to her exact cues.

At some point, I realized I was doing this, and I let it go, reminding myself how anything ego-driven can be so counterproductive.

Plus, I practice yoga to be present, and that was the last thing I was doing. Once again, I was all up in my own head, losing sight of the fact that it was a blissfully uncrowded class in an uncharacteristically large studio (Yogaworks on the UWS, which, is sadly about to close).

And once I let go, I realized how much deeper I was able to go. Physically, I sunk deeper into the poses, and emotionally, I sunk into that time I needed to just absorb the teacher’s calm, even voice, the time I needed to feel grounded and centered in the energy of the other students around me.

Although I’m in a much better place than I have and had been, the truth is still that my mom is not here, and the holidays are coming. She received her diagnoses both times around this time of year, too. Though not as much as last year, this time of year is still heavy in my heart, and it probably will be for a long time. (And my heart goes out to anyone else reading who has tough holidays ahead of them.)

Yoga has done so much for me this year, and I can’t wait to start sharing it with more people (and continuing to deepen my own practice.) I’ll be taking on private clients in December—I’m practicing on friends now!