Eighty degrees in March, and nothing is at rest.

The flowers are up, stretching their arms after nary a winter’s nap. The magnolia has exploded into blossom way before its time, dropping its once-precious petals onto the ground where they turn slipper and slimy like a million mini banana peels. After she sat down on our front steps, the petals left a smear of brown on my the puffy cloth-diapered bum of toddler daughter’s pale pink linen — in March! — pants.

Every day there is a new blossom or bird or piece of our house renovation next door to be the target of her chubby index finger and her catch-all “Whoa!” exclamation. If the warmth and too-early springing into green weren’t enough to rev us up, Daylight Savings Time’s extra hour has shifted our reality into a new gear, one that makes bed before 8 a near impossibility.

Leading up to last Saturday, when we lost that hour, I had managed to get little A to nap twice with help from the car on cooler days before the hammering began next door and then, by napping with her. After my doctor told me “I think you need three hours of rest a day,” I decided that I should just give up on productivity during at-home naps and rest my weary body instead.

That felt good, losing track of time and waking with a new lease on the day. The trick was to start early enough that I didn’t risk sleeping through my son’s afternoon bus pickup time. As long as it was cool, I found I could even get to sleep again in the evening. Finally, my cup was filling with rest. But it was not to last.

All that week, I tried to find slivers of time to fit in my homework for my Mother’s Self-Renewal class, reading and journaling. I’d already missed one of the classes, wallowing in self-pity at all the responsibilities pulling me in so many directions I felt I’d tear apart and lose my stuffing. This time would be different, I’d promised myself.

The plan was that my husband would take my son to gardening day at his school that Saturday morning. I’d have an hour or so of relative quiet in the house to make myself some grain-free “bread” and then nap with my daughter, say 11 to 1, have lunch and leave, fully rested, at 2:15 to enjoy listening to Studio 360 on NPR en route to Tenleytown for the 3:00 class. Also in the plan was for me to come home bursting with energy and joy, or maybe just be pleasantly calm that happiness and parenting and house renovation were not all mutually exclusive.

Then our fridge broke. Or at least got testy. We spent part of the morning moving important things into the new fridge in the shed, purchased on Black Friday for the home we’ll move into this summer. My husband searched around for a fridge that would fit our current smaller space. It ended up that I took the kids — both of them — to gardening day and he used my Sears card to schedule a Monday delivery for a new stainless number to chill our chow.

My son mostly just played with his friends while his sister, after an initial excursion across a muddy field, happily sat and dug at dirt while I weeded. It was a lovely spring morning, still chill enough to feel like the right season. But by the time I’d changed a diaper and nursed in the library, it was past lunchtime and I was tired.

So was the baby, but she was having none of nap. I thought she might fall asleep on the way home. No such luck. Then I tried laying her down, but she preferred instead to cry or crawl over me and push her chubby hand into my flabby belly or neck. I started to see my chances at “self-renewal” crumble.

Off I huffed to drive her to sleep. My husband didn’t stop me with any protestations about my not having the time to do that and go to my class, too. And I didn’t beg. My hopes were already dim.

By the time I pulled back into the driveway with a zonked-out toddler in the back seat, I was too hungry and too tired to drive 45 minutes for a class that I wasn’t very prepared for. I texted the teacher something terse about not being able to finish the session and came inside where my husband was holding the key to the other car so that I could ostensibly turn around and go to class. Points for trying, I guess.

But he doesn’t get that it’s just not that easy. Not for me. I had no snacks, there was no plan for dinner, and I hadn’t rested. I’d been out all morning and used up all my energy cards. This healing business means business.

So what did I do? I didn’t mope as long as I did the previous time I missed class. I resolved to make something out of the day; I took a few drops of Premier Research Labs vitamin B and set about to clean the house enough that it wouldn’t drive me crazy anymore.

The supplement and the sorting seemed to have a positive effect on me, but between the B and the late nap, the baby acted like I’d given her a triple espresso. Back when I was first trying to heal from adrenal fatigue in 2004, I did a couple of vitamin B IVs and National Integrated Health Associates. It’s quite a buzz, like liquid sunshine, warming and energizing you from the inside out. I’d venture to say that this is what my daughter was feeling from my souped-up milk.

At 8:14 p.m., when she should have been asleep, she was giddy and ready to party. The phone rang, and my friend Sarah was ready to talk with me about her journey through adrenal fatigue and the GAPS diet.

Little Miss Alert played with Daddy for a while as I took notes, and then I just nursed her through the rest of the conversation, which was a real turning point for me. To say I am grateful for Sarah sharing is like saying this winter has been on the mild side. Gross understatements. I know lots of people who’ve had lots of health issues, but where I am right now, hearing about Sarah’s journey and healing was nothing short of inspirational. She’s due to have her second child soon, and we talked about birth and recovery along with hard-core gut stuff. It was powerful to hear people on the GAPS diet talk about their experiences at the Weston A. Price Foundation conference and it’s educational to read the many wonderful posts on blogs like Cheeseslave, where author Ann Marie has answered my question about SIgA today. But still, just talking with someone who I’ve known go from sickness to health was so soothing and buoying.

By the time Jen Kogan, the teacher of the self-renewal class called to check up on me on Monday, I had made peace with the fact that this is just not the time for me to take it. The house renovation project needs my attention for the next three months, and my health has got to be the focus of whatever I have left (after, of course, taking care of my children and arranging for childcare and summer camp and whatever we need to keep us all sane and our hair intact). As much as I’ve been wanting to pursue career development, I have to accept that whatever writing I can get done for my own spirit has got to be enough for now.

The rest of week was a hot, sunny blur of contractor appointments and pollen. I felt like Vitamin B and Vitamin Sarah were still going strong well into Thursday night, when another friend at the Holistic Moms meeting told me she’d read my blog and that we had more in common than I’d known. “This is just the current season of our lives,” she reminded us both. When I got home, I was surprised by an email from a graduate school friend who has also gone grain-free after vegetarianism and is on her own journey to balance health and parenthood. To be thanked for my writing twice in one night was a gift.

It’s not lately been clear what literal season it is here, and I tend to want it to be everything all at once in my home life.

The season to mother well vs. to mother myself.

The time to embrace life as a stay-at-home mom vs. the time to publish, to volunteer, to network.

The time to just rest vs. to develop a serious yoga practice, or return to running.

The season to make all my food from scratch all the time and be strict enough to heal (necessary reality) vs. the season to be all done with that and ready to embrace and enjoy so many delicious things I haven’t had for so long, without fear of pain or illness.

I can’t tell winter to just chill out and be winter, and I can’t tell spring not to come. There is no use fighting whatever is. And even if I can’t figure out what today’s reality is going to be or predict tomorrow’s, I can choose to accept rather than fight.

The dirt doesn’t push back the flowers. Let the beauty reveal.

Stop and smell the hyacinths while they’re here. Whenever that is.

It’s been only eight days since I completed my 10-Day Yoga Challenge, but I broke the daily yoga and writing habit in a big way. My last class was on Monday, and on Tuesday night I was up until nearly 1 a.m. preparing food for a surprise road trip to my sister’s on her 50th birthday. Since I have such a specific diet with no starchy vegetables or grain (in addition to no gluten, dairy, corn or soy), everything I would eat all day the next day had to be made from scratch: “pancakes” of egg, nuts and vegetables, turkey burger, apples with no skin, soaked and low-heat-dried nuts, and homemade broth with veggies. This is what I usually eat: I just don’t usually have to prepare it all for a complete day the night before.

My other sister and I began our drive Wednesday morning at 9 a.m.  The trip up I-95 and back later that night took a total of 9.5 hours of driving when it should have taken about 7. It would have helped if the baby had gone to sleep and hadn’t made us stop an extra two times, but the delays were mostly about construction or something invisible but clogging.

Even with my sister riding shotgun and valiantly staying in conversation, I could barely stay awake the last hour. We pulled up to my house at 12:30 a.m. early Thursday morning, and just as I was about to get the baby back to sleep from the carseat into her crib, her brother fell out of bed and split his lip open on the nightstand. He was a wreck, unwilling even to take homeopathy. When it happened, I’d been almost asleep in the rocking chair, exhausted and still feeling the vibration of the road through my weary body. But then all four of us were up with lights on, trying to figure out what the heck had happened.

So after completing my yoga challenge on Monday, I went way far afield. It was amazing that I didn’t collapse or snap on Thursday, but I actually felt okay. It was as though I’d done a detox diet to cleanse in advance of competing in a hot dog eating contest. The unhealthiness of two late nights and a lot of time on the road probably didn’t hit me as hard because of the yoga foundation and all that extra oxygen I’d stored up.

I kept my son home on Thursday, his penultimate day of preschool and got a taste of summer life without school or childcare. Then Friday and the weekend were packed, not to mention incredibly hot. So, when I learned that Virginia Yoga Week was launching Sunday, I was both excited and overwhelmed by all the opportunities I would probably not be able to take advantage of. So many free and cheap classes! New studios to visit! Different traditions to try! In order to keep track of my options amid other scheduled events for the week, I took one of my son’s sheets of painting paper and made myself a giant chart for the week.

This way I was able to see that it would probably be wise to try out sunrise yoga at Pies Fitness Monday morning at 6:00 a.m. I got everything all ready to go and paid my special yoga week rate of $5 online the night before. But then I got to bed too late. Again. So when my alarm went off at 5:30 a.m., I first decided sleep was more important than another challenge. But then I rallied, convinced I probably wouldn’t get back to sleep or successfully undertake a practice of my own for more than 15 minutes. I was too tired to write and too worried about making noise in a sleepy house to clean.

So I rushed outside in the yoga tank I’d set out the night before and was amazed how profoundly it felt like a new world. It was cool. Chilly, even! It was as though my skin could breathe instead of just push away the humidity.

I zipped to the studio and arrived just a few minutes late. There was only one other student, and the teacher was kind and understanding. After a brief centering, I knew it had been wise to come to remind myself to cultivate a sense of awe and reverence for life. We were called to set an intention, and what came to me was to be grateful and enjoy the life I have with my children and husband.

This sounds simple and obvious, but at a time when I am facing a summer with a non-napping and loud preschooler, and a baby who no longer predictably naps, and a husband who is not at the top of his happy game on the heels of his 40th birthday, I’ve been stuck focusing on how to just make things work and get my needs met. In that space, I sometimes forget to enjoy the moment I’m in.

As Momma Zen author Karen Maezen Miller said when I heard her speak back in April at Lil Omm yoga studio, the present moment is the only moment there is at that moment. It’s impossible not to live in it. The choice is in how you experience that living — as a joy and privilege or as a chore, something to get through.

So the call to set an intention was a gift for me to greet my day from a place of wonder and gratitude.

We did a lot of sun salutations, and I realized I was already out of shape again from the gains I’d made during my challenge, something that gives me some pause if I’m going to attend the Anusara Grand Circle or Wanderlust next week.

It was also clear that I was still way underslept and way overtired. As I am now.

Perhaps tomorrow I will get up early and set an intention and undertake a practice while the house is still quiet.

Perhaps tomorrow I will write about the yoga class took with my son today and last Tuesday. I usually like to return later to my writing before I hit Publish, but that feels silly now, even if this post wouldn’t pass the test in an essay workshop.

Because right now, I am exhausted and need to sleep. I did need to write, and I would like to add links, not to mention go spend a bunch of time in the kitchen to save me time in the morning. But in this moment, my body needs rest. So that is what I will give it.

It felt like a graduation. I completed my 10-Day Yoga Challenge Monday yesterday, taking my fourth class with the Anusara-inspired teacher who told me and the other students that we were all ready to kick it up a notch. We’d all gotten comfortable with her repeated calls to isometrically draw our legs together and to hug in, she said, stroking our egos. So now we could reach for “organic” energy to reach out and beyond, to “party in the pose.”

I was happy to end my 10-day intensive on this upbeat note, especially after Day Nine’s call to “play.” Although I was feeling behind the eight ball from having woken late and frazzled for hearing my daughter start crying the minute the babysitter walked in the door, I took the hint to really charge my practice. I imagined a carnival of colors in my limbs, all enjoying the way they complemented each other.

Not enough time had passed before this 10 a.m. class for me to feel sore from the previous day’s afternoon class, though, today, the day after, I feel my core awakened. I am reminded that one needs to keep working to keep getting stronger.

I will save more reflections on my experiment as a whole for a few more days, when the dust has settled and I get through some other deadlines. However, my immediate reaction is generally of happiness that I not only attended ten yoga classes in ten days but also that I wrote about them all each day. That feels great. Go Jess!

What does not feel great is the sense that, while both yoga and writing practices are incredibly healing for me, it’s nearly impossible to do them both and also live in the real world of my house with two children and a husband, a lot of irons in the fire in terms of work (volunteer and otherwise), and a special diet.

Obviously I don’t have to drive 20-40 minutes to a studio every day. I can take elements of this experiment to a more practical and less extreme approach, like a solo practice in the basement or classes at a closer studio or on the weekend. And my baby will not be exclusively breastfed and separation-anxious forever.

Still, I admit that I had a hard time holding onto the vibe of the “party” as the (hot!) afternoon wore on, and the baby wouldn’t sleep, and I had to go out to attend the last meeting of my son’s Waldorf preschool/kindergarten, which he still doesn’t know he won’t be attending next year.

The vibrant colors that were tired of partying in my muscles later swirled in the more confined space of my heart through the night, getting me out of bed at 4 a.m. to create some semblance of order by sorting napkins and paying my credit card bill.

I hope I can keep cultivating the voices of my teachers during my more challenging times, which I expect to abound during long summer days with a child out of school and another about to walk.

I hope to play, shine, radiate and all that good stuff, even when I fear too much indulgence in “partying” is going to come with a hangover of dirty dishes, unpaid bills, and piles of laundry.

–

How do you literally find the time to meet your own needs and keep things moving along at home without making uncomfortable compromises?

Other posts in this series:

Day One: The challenge begins!

Day Two: “Let your bottom blossom”

Day Three: “Shine!”

Day Four: “Surrender”

Day Five: “Root and reach”

Day Six: “Brighten the belly”

Day Seven: “Reveal”

Day Eight: “Expose your heart”

Day Nine: “Play”

Day Ten: “Party in the pose”

Today, I am tired. I had trouble focusing in the Anusara class on this, my seventh day of my 10-Day Yoga Challenge. I did not feel strong and bright.

I’d gone to bed too late, the baby had woken too often, and I hadn’t gotten up early enough to eat enough to sustain me through a practice.

So I was actually grateful that the teacher was stuck in traffic so I could lie down and wait.

And then I was grateful when she told us to just go on our bellies for our first cobra pose from something else low, admitting that sometimes she enjoys “cheating” and getting to do a cobra without having to go through chaturanga.

I was grateful for her honesty, especially on a day when I couldn’t focus and kept lowering my knee when she said foot or getting something else wrong by doing what I imagined would make sense instead of listening to the actual words being spoken in the room.

It was still wonderful to breathe. And my down dog toward the end of the class did, I’m sure, look different than my first one. I got some great adjustments that made me feel taller and open. But I also felt a little jealous of like daughter who was sleeping in the car with a babysitter and open windows on a beautiful morning.

Perhaps all the extra oxygen I get in the 75 minutes I seriously breathe does compensate some for the lack of sleep, but woman cannot live by breath alone. Well, at least breastfeeding woman can’t.

The teacher called on us to “reveal” in our side angle twists, opening our chests and side bodies. But really, the whole practice reveals us to ourselves.

Other posts in this series:

Day One: The challenge begins!

Day Two: “Let your bottom blossom”

Day Three: “Shine!”

Day Four: “Surrender”

Day Five: “Root and reach”

Day Six: “Brighten the belly”

Day Seven: “Reveal”

Day Eight: “Expose your heart”

Day Nine: “Play”

Day Ten: “Party in the pose”

I might have missed my exit if this were my first day driving into the District. The rising sun made it impossible to see the sign for Rosslyn/Key Bridge. But by now, this sixth day of my 10-Day Yoga Challenge, I feel like I know what I’m doing, and I know where to turn.

And I feel good.

The soreness of the first few days has faded. My arms are stronger. My belly might be a little flatter. My legs are more solid. My heart is lighter.

So when the teacher gave us the choice to do a “connecting vinyasa” or to just stay in downward-facing dog, I was actually glad for the opportunity to lower down into chaturanga and then rise into cobra — and even up dog a few times. I’m sure my form could still use some work, but what a joy to enjoy rather than dread this powerful flow.

I admit, though, it also helped that the teacher started the class slowly, with us in lying back in bound cobbler, or supta baddha konasana, and then a few other gentle poses. Since the class was only one hour, 6:30-7:30 a.m., I knew that there could only be so many minutes of active poses! So I enjoyed them in the moment.

And isn’t that really the message of yoga: be in the moment, and don’t think about the future? But I have an intense need to put things in context, like I did today: “I can do this now if I get to rest later.”

I do it all the time parenting, too, and when my expectations are so far from reality, it’s easy to get thrown off.

For example, I thought to myself that I would write this piece after the baby went to sleep. But she must be about to welcome some teeth, because nothing is working with her this week. Sleep needs to be initiated by riding: in a car, in a stroller, or on a parent’s back. The idea of accomplishing a certain set of tasks is thrown out the window many times a day.

I recently attended a workshop with Karen Maezen Miller, author of Momma Zen and Hand Wash Cold, at Lil Omm studio. Miller wouldn’t let us take notes, so I’m a little hazy on what all she said when. But I know I breathed a lot, and well, and I know she said of the phrase “live in the now” something like “But now is all there is.” Of course. But how rarely we live that way. Instead, we live like the now is unimportant; it will soon be over and we will finally be on to the real thing, the New Now.

Sometimes that looking ahead serves our sanity, like telling ourselves a baby won’t always need to suck on something to fall asleep. Sometimes it allows ourselves to take on something that might seem daunting, like a vinyasa when you know their numbers are limited. Or ten consecutive days of yoga when you know they will run out.

Knowing I have this challenge to fulfill — this specific thing in the midst of so many half-projects and unclosed correspondence loops — has made me happy. I love looking forward to the practice and to the process. It feels so good to breathe consciously, to find new spaces and to cultivate compassion and confidence to do things I never think of while washing dishes or changing a diaper, like “brighten my belly.”

Tonight, I don’t worry too much about only doing a few stretches before bed because I know I will get a full practice in the morning. Now is acceptable because Later will be good.

What if I gave myself that gift of commitment on a regular basis, not so that I would constantly live in the future but just so that a healthy pattern would just be how we do things instead of something I have to squeeze into small spaces, spaces I can’t force into being and that might disappear?

I just forgot to breathe. I remembered.

There is only this moment. And now this one.

Thank you, Day Six.

Other posts in this series:

Day One: The challenge begins!

Day Two: “Let your bottom blossom”

Day Three: “Shine!”

Day Four: “Surrender”

Day Five: “Root and reach”

Day Six: “Brighten the belly”

Day Seven: “Reveal”

Day Eight: “Expose your heart”

Day Nine: “Play”

Day Ten: “Party in the pose”

I cannot wait for tomorrow’s 6:30 a.m. yoga class. Seriously.

I’m tired and sweaty, and at 9:00 p.m., both my kids have just gotten to sleep. I have miles to go before I can.

But, when I look ahead at tomorrow, I think about crossing the Potomac just after sunrise and about arriving home at 8:00 a.m. after having been out of the house by myself for a glorious two hours filled with yoga and NPR. That sounds like bliss. And even if I have to drive the baby to get her to nap or her brother melts down after I pick him up from preschool at noon, I know I will come to any frustration upon a foundation of freedom.

So maybe I’m starting to get a little addicted to yoga. There are worse things, no?

It’s surprisingly fun to have this daily dose to look forward to. It feels special, like the days of early pregnancy when you’re sitting at a red light and suddenly remember you have within you a miniscule little secret is going to change your life in ways you can’t imagine.

I do hope this little experiment results in some new habits, or at least new ideas about the possibility of developing good habits. I have always been one of those people reluctant to commit to always doing x or y on A or B day. But I know routine serves my son well, and I bet it would me, too. I mean, so what if the only thing I counted on as a kid was watching General Hospital at 3 p.m. ? You’d think that I might have evolved into some self-regulation in the past three decades.

Today — Day Five of my 10-Day Yoga Challenge — was another Anusara-inspired class. Two other women were there to practice with the same teacher I had on Monday. The first down dogs again threatened to do me in, sore as I am from four days in a row of way more upper body work than I’m used to. But once we warmed up, I found bliss in each dog coming on its own or between poses.

Balance poses abounded today, connecting one half of my body and my brain to the other.  A good description or a well-placed touch makes such a difference. The teacher was generous in her adjustments, and, by softening the inner front of the back leg, I found a brand new openness in triangle and side angle pose.

Much of today’s work came from spiraling legs in opposite directions and from rooting and reaching: opposite reactions serving one purpose.

Only when you’re grounded can you truly reach for the sky.

The plants that wilted in this afternoon’s hot sun later bowed in the wind and rain and then, when the skies cleared, sprang to life, blossoms open and wide.

The baby who was exhausted when I took her upstairs during the darkening of the sky smiled with wide eyes after nursing, uninterested in sleep and happy to return to the brightened-again downstairs.

As evidenced by the hyphenated title of my blog, I pretty much always feel more than one thing at a time.  I tend to act limited by too many choices or being “pulled in so many directions.” What is nice is to feel those opposing reactions serving the same purpose.

This day, I felt integrated. I didn’t feel leaden in my legs but fizzy in my heart. I didn’t hungry but stuffed. I just felt full, turgid, consistent.

And so glad I have the chance to start my day with yoga tomorrow.

—–

What do you look forward to and why?

What does it take to fall in love with a habit or a routine?

—–

Other posts in this series:

Day One: The challenge begins!

Day Two: “Let your bottom blossom”

Day Three: “Shine!”

Day Four: “Surrender”

Day Five: “Root and reach”

Day Six: “Brighten the belly”

Day Seven: “Reveal”

Day Eight: “Expose your heart”

Day Nine: “Play”

Day Ten: “Party in the pose”

“Rest your shoulder blades on the back of your heart,” the teacher said. But what if the heart is tender?

“Surrender,” she said later, in what felt at once like a welcoming to take a breather and at the same time, almost a dare. Am I capable of surrendering? Can I ever not try so hard?

Today was Day Four of my 10-day Yoga Challenge, and the class was Sunrise Flow, 6:30-7:30 a.m. The previous evening, I had prepped most of what I needed before I left for an 8:00 p.m. tutoring session (my last of the school year!) and the rest after I returned at 10:15: yoga clothes ready on the couch, water bottle full, wallet and phone in yoga mat bag. I’d put my veggies in a glass in the fridge but hadn’t put the juicer back together. I had apple slices and nuts ready for the road if I needed them before or after class. I’d washed the spinach and red pepper to cook with my husband and son’s eggs.

All I had to do was somehow get out of the house by 6:10 a.m. without leaking breasts and without disturbing the rest of the family. But I also had to get my heart stuck from my throat.

When I’d gotten home from tutoring the previous night, I sat in the driveway to get through a few emails on my phone. One was from a friend with whom I fulfill a school volunteer commitment, and she wasn’t exactly pleased with the way I’d handled something with other folks. I knew I hadn’t meant any harm, but I also could see why she bristled.

“There I go again,” I started to think. It’s been exactly a year since a good friend wrote me a Dear John letter asking me to respect her wishes not to be in touch until/unless she reached out to me first. This time I’m not seven months pregnant, but the story of me not being a great friend isn’t new. While I find the Pony Express approach regrettable, to put it mildly, I can understand why that friend was probably sick of me. I wasn’t — am not — exactly easy to be around. Things are always a production with me. Here I am, going on a 10-day yoga binge instead of just signing up for a weekly class.

And now I’ve pissed off another friend, I thought. But I tried not to get spiraled into negativity and just sent out compassion to my new friend and forgiveness toward myself.

I slept hard, and after a very awake and peppy baby watched me hydrate, dress, and start her brother and father’s breakfast, I handed her over around 6:15 and zipped away in the car hoping to believe it was, in fact, a new day.

I’m sure that people who cross the Potomac every morning are inured to it. My commute was easy, but radio reports told a different story further out from the city. Plenty of people were on their way to Regular Life. But this was revolutionary for me: to be out alone in the morning. Seeing the sun rise somewhere other than through my kitchen window. Imagining a world outside my tiny one.

And yet, that tiny one is precious, and it is mine. NPR ran a story about women saving their eggs for future babies, and I had the epiphany that — surprise! — I am so blessed to have two healthy children after two healthy pregnancies (and one fast and natural birth). This is what I wanted, right? When I was praying and struggling to heal my thyroid years ago, I wanted to be a mother. I wanted to create a home, a family.

And yet somehow it feels like everything is in the way of — instead of in service to — mothering.

But it’s all in the attitude. Like hearing “Surrender” as an invitation instead of a dare.

The class was good, and very similar to the other three except that all three other students were men. I am certainly sore but still enjoying everything and feeling stronger. I was so glad to have made it to class, if a few minutes late. It felt both safe and challenging to enter the studio for my fourth guided practice in a row after months of almost nothing.

I got home a little later than I’d promised, but my husband had survived with the kids and then made it to work without missing any meetings. Within 25 minutes of my walking in the door, I made my juice and nursed the baby; I got my son to finish his breakfast, get dressed, pee and brush his teeth; and we left for preschool.

In the parking lot, I got to hug my recently offended friend and, I hope, right things up (even though I interrupted her conversation with another mom to apologize. Old habits die hard.). I came close to tears and glistened with them on the way home, but I never did find my sob. I think it may surface soon.

Before I drove away with a sleeping baby in tow, a mutual friend who recently completed a yoga teacher training said she felt like she was just starting; there’s so much to know. Nothing is ever “done,” I offered, explaining that I’m trying to just embrace the unending process of things instead of looking toward some unattainable end point, which is my more natural inclination.

I got lucky with a carseat napper, and I felt great just drinking water and eating some apple until after the baby woke at 11:30. My recent obsession with eating until way beyond full (because who knows when I’ll get to sit down to a quiet meal again!) seemed to have faded today. No longer was I a squirrel storing away calories for the winter (or, in this case, a flabby belly). I felt cleansed and satisfied with a lighter plate than and through the rest of the day.

When I picked up my son, I was quicker to laugh and smile than to snap and shush. The three of us had a lovely afternoon together, a welcome change from the long holiday, hot, bright (for so many hours!) weekend that we struggled to fill without the four of us driving each other crazy.

It’s 11:05 p.m., and I find it a little hard to believe that it’s the same day I drove across Key Bridge at 6:25 a.m. But it is. And it was good.

Time to surrender, to sleep.

Day One: The challenge begins!

Day Two: “Let your bottom blossom”

Day Three: “Shine!”

Day Five: “Root and reach”

Day Six: “Brighten the belly”

Day Seven: “Reveal”

Day Eight: “Expose your heart”

Day Nine: “Play”

Day Ten: “Party in the pose”

I made it to my third yoga class in a row today in my self-imposed challenge to go every day for 10 days on my $10 ten-day pass at Centered Yoga.

This class — the 9:30 a.m. Anusara-inspired yoga — was what drew me to the studio. I like what I know about this style, thought that is admittedly not a lot. I get the sense that it balances a focus on alignment and on being in the pose with a heart-centered openness to joy.

Today there was only one other student, so we got lots of adjustments and personalization, but it was still about the experience and not about us as though it were a private session. If I closed my eyes, I might be in a full room. The teacher used a lot of the same language as the one who taught my previous two classes — puffing the kidneys, description of rotating and spiraling, softening the mid-back. The room was quiet, filled only with the sound of instructions, our breath and the A/C.

There are so many differences between doing a home practice and going to a class. Obviously, a teacher is probably going to have you do things you might not do at home. But she’s also likely to have you hold poses longer, especially if you are a wimp like me who can barely hold her 18.5-pound daughter in one arm for more than 42 seconds at a time. It’s been great to realize that even if I think my arms are going to fall off with the very first down dog of a class, I can actually keep coming back to the pose and find it restful and enjoyable over and over throughout the class.

And there’s that language I was talking about yesterday. Listening to someone put images in your head of how your body can be in space makes a big difference. I do think I was trained well at Unity Woods, an Iyengar studio I went to years ago; I know a lot more about alignment than your average gym yoga rat. But if I’m not hearing my own internal voice at home, none of those subtle, yummy adjustments get made.

And beyond hearing descriptions and watching demos, classes offer the opportunity for physical adjustments. Many times today I found length and openness thanks to the teacher’s pressure, support, or even soft touch. It’s wonderful to have help to find something that you didn’t even know was possible and maybe didn’t even understand you were trying to attain until she helped you get there.

I forgot to mention in yesterday’s post that the Sunday Hatha teacher gave me my first “Sivasana Assist.” We could opt out by putting our hands on our bellies during this final relaxation, but I am all about assistance, even if I don’t know what it is going to feel like! I was so blissed out by her pressing on a few points on my feet, I can’t even tell you what else she did. Something about pulling my legs, I think, followed by pushing on my shoulders so that they opened more. At any rate, it was a delicious ending to a great class, and I got some of that shoulder-opening today, too, along with so many helpful adjustments during the class.

It is so fun to get disciplined about this. It feels good to be a little sore and to know I’m getting stronger.

Tomorrow I would have to find a sitter to get to the 10:00 class or hope that my husband would get home by 6:00 and be ready to take on two kids if I wanted to do that 6:45, which is likely to be more full. Both are vinyasa flow, which scares me a little. I don’t know that I could keep up! Maybe toward the end of this experiment.

So the thought right now, husband willing, is that I go to the 6:307:30 a.m. Sunrise Flow class. Traffic should be light, so I could probably leave as late as 6:10 and get there on time and, going reverse commute, be home by 7:50 so that LJ can scoot out to work. It’s a little later than ideal, but it’s no later than he might get out anyway, especially after a hot three-day weekend. He even said he’d make breakfast for the boy and for him. But I tutor tonight until 10 p.m., so it might be a push to get up and hydrated and out the door around 6 a.m.! And I can’t predict how happy the baby will be about that, but her sleep has been such a crapshoot lately, I can’t work too hard to preserve something that doesn’t happen. Last week, I nearly lost my mind trying three times in one morning to get her to sleep, plus a walk, only to have her fall asleep the instant we got in the car to pick up her brother.

It is so hot here in the D.C., I wonder if the studios and gyms will fill up in the post-holiday week to come since you’d have to be insane and a glutton for breathing problems to work out in the outdoors on a day like today. A cool studio was the place to be this morning! LJ just called me from REI, where he said there must be more people than on the bike trail. (I’m at home with a baby who fell asleep in the other car on the way there, so we just came home).

One thing teachers always correct on me is my arms, which I can never get very straight or leave up for very long in poses like Warrior 1. But in my mind’s eye, I now can picture just letting them “shine” out to the corners of the room while I looked out the sunny window in the white painted brick studio.

Maybe it’s also the studio’s yellow and green sun logo that’s subliminally working on me. Or perhaps I’m thinking of the photo I put up to go with yesterday’s post.  What matters is only that I feel centered and shiny.

And looking forward to tomorrow. Even if it is going to come early.

Other posts in this series:

Day One: The challenge begins!

Day Two: “Let your bottom blossom”

Day Four: “Surrender”

Day Five: “Root and reach”

Day Six: “Brighten the belly”

Day Seven: “Reveal”

Day Eight: “Expose your heart”

Day Nine: “Play”

Day Ten: “Party in the pose”

After my first of what I hope will be ten consecutive days of yoga class, I woke today feeling like my calf muscles had wrapped themselves around my legs. Same with the triceps. It was an enjoyable, tightened sore, like I’d had someone squeeze me into Saran Wrap.

I was feeling so good yesterday after that morning’s class, I went to bed too late. So today my temper was a smidge short and my blood sugar too sensitive. I’m guessing without the yoga I would have been much grumpier, but I can’t prove it.

Even though I had to leave the house at 7:15 to tutor (which meant we’d have to have dinner ready by 5:45,which meant it had to be cooking while I was going to be gone,) the plan was that I would attend a 4:00 class billed just as Hatha yoga, but with the same teacher as the one who subbed yesterday for Gentle. Miraculously, the baby took two decent naps today, so I wasn’t feeling too guilty about leaving LJ with both kids during the day and at bedtime.

The teacher told us today, as she did yesterday, to “puff our kidneys” a lot, and today she added that we should let our “bottoms blossom,” an organic way of telling us to spread those sits bones!

I do love the poetic language of yoga, the suggestive expressions that lead you into your body in a way that everyday language does not. The kind of description a toddler might come up with if left to his own devices but a preschooler more used to the way people usually talk might be more likely to crack up at as being “silly!”

Thinking of my bottom as a flower opening into newness is something I can happily buy into. And, as my tutoring students tonight might have told me if I’m doing my job,  “bottom blossom” is alliteration! (And assonance, but they’re not studying that. Only one more night of helping prep schoolers and I can start going to bed earlier!)

I do enjoy the chatty, community Iyengar approach where the teacher in the two Fridays I’ve attended at Unity Woods and the teacher I studied under for three years a while back know everyone’s name and pay attention to their issues and needs. In fact, I got an ego boost when I was told, “Oh, Jessica, put those blocks down a level,” assurance that my asana was looking decent and I could go deeper.

But it was also nice today at Centered Yoga to just be one of a class (five of us) and know I’d be adjusted if something were glaring. And I can appreciate a little Nick Drake while blissing out on breath. Although I sing with my kids and to my kids, and my husband has more CDs and audio files than I know about, I haven’t bought any music for me in a long time and never take the time to listen to anything other than NPR or occasionally jazz or World music on WPFW or classical on WETA. Music is another type of beauty I’ve let slip through my fingers in the daily scramble to make healthy food and do all those worldly things like volunteering, signing up for nature center classes, planting flowers, writing, thinking about new kitchen counters, nursing a baby. Today’s music was yummy.

The class had me sweating, though I didn’t fare as bad as the guy who soaked his grey t-shirt. My arms will definitely feel those planks and chaturangas tomorrow. And so many down dogs! But I do already feel stronger, and it feels so cleansing to do so much breathing when it’s deep and free and intentional.

There is much joy in reaching for the sky and for windows. And much to be learned in getting to know one’s body.

Other posts in this series:

Day One: The challenge begins!

Day Three: “Shine!”

Day Four: “Surrender”

Day Five: “Root and reach”

Day Six: “Brighten the belly”

Day Seven: “Reveal”

Day Eight: “Expose your heart”

Day Nine: “Play”

Day Ten: “Party in the pose”

This post originally appeared on DC Metro Moms on November 6, 2009

Gym Childcare: Mandatory TV?

I wouldn’t even consider leaving if the monthly fees weren’t so expensive. Well, that and I must say I was intrigued by the idea of a spa on site at the new place – I could work out AND get a pedicure or a massage for $1/hour childcare! It had better evening and weekend parking, and a saline pool, not to mention newer exercise equipment. And a friend of mine says the yoga is good. But TV as a requirement for my three-year-old?
Sorry, but I pay sitters to play with my kid specifically so I won’t have to resort to the TV. I spent way too many hours as a kid learning how to talk trash from “General Hospital,” and I just don’t like how my son acts when he’s all hyped up on visual stimulation. Waldorf education claims that early media exposure just keeps kids from doing their natural think of imagining stuff themselves. Even if I didn’t agree with that, I know that if I’m already bringing my son to a busy, chaotic gym, I might have to peel him off the walls to get him back home. Now what does that do to my yoga buzz?
To his credit, the manager was nice, if surprised. He didn’t know about the policy, and, when the inquiry I sent to the company headquarters was forwarded directly to him, he reiterated in an email to me that, as a father, he understood my concerns, and they would work on the noise level. Indeed, when I picked up my son that one day, the sound was low, and the show was a cartoon.
But the manager also said the company takes customer concerns very seriously. So then why haven’t I gotten an answer almost three months later? I’d like to know what they are thinking with this policy. I finished out my trial week without a second childcare visit, and in the end I decided that the new place with its multiple music video screens on every wall was actually too high-strung even for grown-up me. I think it’s just not the right fit, but the lower cost did inspire me to quit my other gym, too. Now that my son is in preschool and I have more flexibility (but less cash), I’m headed for the cheap county fitness center, and the bike trail.
I received a promotional email from the new gym manager last week and asked him if he ever heard back from corporate. I told him why I didn’t expect to join the gym right now, including a note that I would want to at least get a response on the company’s rationale for a policy I disagreed with on its face. He wrote back a quick thanks with “let me know if I can ever be of service,” which I responded to by asking again what the reasoning for the policy was.
Now the gym is strangely quiet.

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