The instant I read the words, I regretted picking up my BlackBerry that one last time before going to bed. A well-meaning relative of mine had read my recent post about my health and my leaky gut problem and told me: “This is not the time to volunteer for things.” She intended to point out that there would be plenty of time later in life for me to pursue my interests when I didn’t have as many health challenges to face and when I wasn’t in such a busy time of motherhood with a kindergartener and opinionated non-verbal toddler.

I get her point. Really, I do. The problem is that her note assumes that volunteering is something that detracts from my well-being. Sure, it might have seemed that way in the post she read. I’d rushed to finish it and get it up rather than wait until who knows when I’d get a free moment to sit down again. I did, I realize, sound a little overwhelmed. And yes, balance is something I’m working on.

But I don’t regret my choices, and I don’t want them restricted. That wouldn’t help. If I weren’t busy with something that felt meaningful, that contributed to my priorities, that gave me joy, or that fueled me with passion, I would be, simply put, depressed. Staying busy and engaged in something bigger than myself is a necessity for me to stay mentally healthy without medication.

And staying off medication is something I feel is a physical necessity as well; I simply don’t think my body can handle being on anti-depressants. They made an amazing difference for two years, and then again for a year while I sought treatment for hyperthyroidism (Graves’ Disease).

But they are drugs. Even if I weren’t a true believer in the healing power of nutrition and energy work, my system has shown me it simply cannot handle anything artificial. As much as SSRIs helped, I’m also pretty convinced that they contributed to the mess I’m in now — a much smaller role than 30 years of eating gluten, probably, but a role nonetheless.

No amount of saying no to volunteer work is going to undo all the damage that was caused by decades of eating food my body couldn’t handle, to say nothing of mild but young substance abuse. What will help me heal is continuing to eat real food, pursuing what makes me happy, and cultivating a mindfulness practice. It takes a lot more time and energy than popping a pill, but I really don’t see that I have a choice if I have my long-term health in mind.

Until I got this late-night email, I was, I admit, stewing a little about the lack of time to do everything I cared about. But rather than push me to step aside, as was its intention, the note inspired me to remember why I have chosen what I’ve chosen to do and to be grateful that I have the opportunity to do it.

The fundraiser I was working on was a great success, both in money raised and in positive momentum and a spirit of community, which was probably even more valuable to this project about which I care deeply. Even as I wished for more hours in the day to proofread the program and organize the volunteer schedule, I remembered that I proposed this event because I believe in the cause and that I offered to head it up because it’s something I knew I could do well. I knew it could be a great thing, and I wanted to create that.

So I carried that purpose with me into the event and sincerely enjoyed it. I lapped up the kudos with nary a self-critical remark or “if only we could have” lament. It was just good, plain and simple. We can debrief and learn from it, sure, but the thing I am most proud of is just enjoying it.

And then, when I came home after being gone at the school 11 a.m.-5 p.m. and launched right back into domestic goddess mode, I took on that role without resentment. Sure, there was a smidge of “really?” in my brain when my husband said he was super tired, but rather than go to a place of bitterness, I just chalked it up to a confirmation that the job I usually do of managing house and home is, indeed, a tiring one!

I wanted the laundry and dishes dealt with, so I did them.

I wanted celery and other veggies for the next day and to not cook that night or ask my tired husband to rally, so I went out to the grocery store after picking up take-out.

I wanted to do yoga before eating in peace and quiet, so I waited until after the family meal and bedtime to get on my mat and then eat my own safe food.

Somehow, that email sparked — or stoked — a fire. What started as angry turned cozy and glowing. The email inspired me, in part, to take the Mother’s Self-Renewal workshop to explore issues of balance and honoring our many selves. That first session then gave me the sense that I am both not alone in my dilemmas about time and also that my process is one to honor. It is part of my mothering to model not perfection but an embracing of personal growth and inquiry.

So thank you, dear relative, even if noting you wish you’d gotten advice from your elders still doesn’t convince me that you weren’t being more judgmental than supportive. Regardless of their intent, your words helped me see through the messiness of internal conflict and to look toward something varied and beautiful.

I wouldn’t have even bothered to do the test if I didn’t think I had digestive problems. I know I do. But some of the information I got from my labs this week was information I didn’t even know could be found.

It’s been 11 months since I went on the GAPS diet, which has helped immensely with IBS symptoms. But I’ve had to stay on a modified version of the introduction diet: whenever I try to introduce too much raw vegetable, I pay for it. And fruit? I stayed off for a long time until peach season was in full bloom. I indulged some, really imagining that local, in-season produce could really be okay. But it wasn’t.

In August I met with a chiropractor and energy worker who helped me dramatically, and when I saw her later in the fall, she confirmed what I’d suspected: that I just had to eliminate all fruit. Me + any kind of sugar = problem.

To compensate for my lack of sweet indulgence of any kind, I sought out more and more fat. I was eating spoonfuls of nut butter after high-protein, filling meals. It seemed both a physical need to load up at meals in the darkening days of late fall and also an emotional need to indulge. For a while these were all soaked nuts, but that got so expensive to buy and time-consuming to make, I started buying regular nut butters, which I think have way too much phytic acid for me.

But compulsive eating wasn’t the only problem: I was also scratching the skin on my knees and elbows until they bled. This happened after several months after my first child was born and lasted until he was two and sleeping through the night; I don’t know if it was all the healing stuff I did that spring, or just the time elapsed, a decrease in nursing, or or an increase in interrupted sleep that made the difference. With my second child, the psoriasis came just a few months after she was born (at home, not a c-section), and now 17 months in and some decrease in nursing overall and night waking in particular, I see no signs of improvement.

Rather than take steroids or other topicals that are just going to push the problem further into my body as I did through my childhood and young adulthood, I’m determined to address the source of the problem. If only we could figure out what that is.

From the kitchen in the house we are renovating. I feel like MY insides must look just as bad.

The doctor recommended an expanded GI panel from DiagnosTechs. The test cost around $250 and would analyze my stool and saliva for parasites, bacteria, food sensitivities and some other stuff I didn’t even know it you could analyze.

The results just came in last week. I am free of any icky critters, my pH is fine, and Candida (yeast) showed up at only trace levels. Good news.

However, there were some bacteria, which we’re going to treat with Goldenseal and garlic, and the test confirmed dairy (casein) and gluten (gliadin) sensitivity through positive SIgA results.

No surprise there. The doctor I saw is generally not an absolutist on food or a believer in intolerances needing to last a lifetime, but she said it was clear I needed to stay gluten-free and dairy-free. The test panel explains:

“Predisposed individuals often experience intestinal inflammation after consumption of offending foods. Subsequently, the intestinal mucosa releases secretory IgA to neutralize the antigens. SIgA testing, unlike IgG, allows the detection of mild, subclinical and latent intolerance cases. Furthermore, the short SIgA half-life ensures earlier and more effective compliance and follow-up assessments.”

To have a positive gliadin AB, SIgA reading at the numerical level I showed after more than seven years on a gluten-free diet (and very little prepared food in my diet in the past year) means that I am super sensitive, the doc said.

Also of interest was the fact that I had “abnormally low” Chrymotrypsin levels, which is “suggestive of poor pancreatic output of all enzymes.” Perhaps this explains why I’m so darn sensitive to sugar! For this we are supplementing with an enzyme and hoping it will kick-start my body into remembering how to make it itself (and certainly help me until that happens).

But the most important thing, is, apparently, that I have just about no protective gut lining, or Intestinal Secretory IgA (SIgA). When people talk about a damaged gut “leaking” food into the bloodstream, it’s because there is no protective mucus to stop it. This test calls low <400 mg/100 g dry wt.

My number?

<1.

Seriously.

So even after a year of gentle eating, my gut is still this damaged. I think if I hadn’t gone on GAPS, I would probably be in the hospital on an IV!

If I understand it correctly, my epithelium is so compromised, my digestive system is letting food particles into my bloodstream, and then my body is lashing out at them as though they are foreign invaders. One of the results is the psoriasis. If you poke around online, you’ll also see a lot about low SIgA being linked to autism and ADHD. The doctor says my gut, pancreas and thyroid woes are all linked.

So what do we do? For one thing, I’m taking L-Glutamine to help heal my gut lining. I’ve taken this before and am not sure why I didn’t pick it back up months ago. The doctor is also ordering me some casein-free colostrom. Gosh, maybe it would even help to drink my own milk. I’m staying on the Green Pastures fermented cod liver oil and fish oil.

There was another Medi-Herb product the doctor wanted to put me on but isn’t since I’m still breastfeeding little A. I worry that at some point, I might need to switch the priority of gut health to hers over mine and wean. My son nursed until age 3, and I didn’t think I do anything shy of two years this time around. But something’s gotta give.

This doctor and other practitioners are not finding (through muscle-testing) that I need probiotics at this time, and since I didn’t have a huge overgrowth of yeast and since I feel like I have had negative reactions when I’ve taken the GAPS-recommended Bio-Kult, I will stay off. I’m eating some fermented foods (not a lot), but I’ve slacked on using lots of animal fats like lard, as I was some months back. Lately, I’ve stuck mostly to coconut oil for cooking and olive oil for extra (uncooked) flavor.

And I haven’t been eating much in the way of organ meats, as GAPS would recommend. It’s enough work to start the day with green juice, get some veggies cooked in broth, make eggs, veggies and some (non-processed) meat and then do it all over again for lunch and dinner, plus prepare meals for the kids and my husband. And did I mention we are renovating a house? And I’m organizing a school fundraiser for a wetlands learning lab?

So what else is supposed to help with gut lining? Less cortisol. Less stress. More relaxation. Riiiight.

My fear of depression scares me away from a life of quiet (or much meditation, or enough yoga over walks), but taking on too much clearly is doing me no favors. If I just weren’t interested in so many things…

The baby is waking up from the nap she miraculously went down for (just over an hour ago) with relative ease (a rarity!), and my son and husband are headed back from the farmers market. Maybe now that it’s past noon on Sunday, a full 24 hours after I started this post, I should just pull the trigger and get it up.

But I’m pretty sure there is a whole lot more to learn.

It was a day when every hour looked like 5 p.m.

Grey. Rain. Then rainier, and windy.

My boys, on their way home through the hurricane. (Alternate title: A visual representation of the fog I've been feeling in my body and mind for weeks.)

So why am I feeling better than I’ve felt since, like, June?

One guess is the yoga. I did about 20 minutes alone upstairs in my bedroom this morning, after 5 minutes using the chi machine. Post-juice, pre-breakfast. And pre-arrival of babysitter who was to spend four glorious hours keeping the kids entertained. The wash of ooh-ah-um after even a short bridge pose is amazing. The high is so obvious when you don’t do it for a while.

Yes, yoga probably helped. But what else?

Last night and this morning I used some Bach flower essences. Olive for exhaustion. Scleranthus for indecision. Elm and something else for responsibility/burden and blaming self. Or maybe I chose the one on forgiveness.

Speaking of forgiveness, last night I brought up an unresolved hurt from last weekend with my husband. I wouldn’t say I have zero fear of the same kind of thing happening again that I initially got upset about, but I did feel reasonably heard. So that probably helped. As did some Tivo’d Saturday Night Live we watched after clearing the air. (Thanks, Tina Fey and Maya Rudolph for the opening monologue/duet on the Mother’s Day episode).

Reading about letting go and being mindful in Buddhism for Mothers: A Calm Approach to Caring for Yourself and Your Children and Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life has probably helped my mood (and my willingness to drop last weekend’s scuffle once I’d had the chance to shout about it).

Though I find myself often slightly annoyed at the authors of these books — with a crabby, “Yes, I already know that’s how I should be. But how? Map it out for me in my actual life!” –  I also notice that just the act of reading about Zen makes me breathe more slowly and deliberately. Chew more. Pause. All important things. All possibly due some credit when it comes to my improved mood and energy.

On a more physical level, some changes might finally be taking effect. It’s Saturday night, four days since I saw a chiropractor/healer who adjusted me, muscle-tested me, gave me two doses of homeopathic remedies and loaded me up with supplements. I had so much going on, I sucked up my daughter’s appointment too, taking almost two full hours of this doctor’s time!

My thyroid is low, and my cholesterol super high. My adrenals are a wreck. I’ve felt not just depressed but fatigued beyond my years since early July.  Some bodywork a few weeks ago might have helped, but I was banking on a visit to this healer to get me on the road to recovery. Some Standard Process supplements and others should help with my fat metabolism problem, which is probably the cause of my high cholesterol and thanks to  my thyroid disorder, which is probably exacerbated by my adrenal fatigue, which probably also messes with my digestion and means I’m not absorbing nutrients. I’ve got supplements for all those issues, at least for a short time until I round a corner. Maybe the new pills I’m popping — or the extra food-based B vitamin with dinner — are starting to take effect.

Just before the earthquake started, the doctor was muscle-testing me about sleep, coming up with the prescription for 8-10 hours and a bedtime as close to 9:00 as possible. The rumble of the ground, I believe, was the universe hearing the doctor’s pronouncement and pounding exclamation marks over and over like a teenage girl’s note about a crush.

Okay, I get it. I need to sleep.

One of the tidbits of wisdom in the Buddhism for Mothers book was a quote from someone else to the effect of: it’s not at the gas pump that you actually use gas. Right. Store up the good to use later, or pay for it if you run on empty. I believe I’m now — one year postpartum — feeling the effects of doing too much after A’s birth, not napping with her at all (like I did daily with my son back in the day), and having even more interrupted nights very early on postpartum (thanks to my champion newborn night pooper!).

No wonder my digestion got so wonky. No wonder my skin is scaly and red. No wonder I bruise if you breathe on me.

And now the hair shedding has begun. And my belly has the look of an ad with the headline “Is your thyroid making you fat?” And since July, it’s been all I can do to walk around the block by myself, or up the stairs carrying the baby. Whose body is this?

Today, it feels a little more like mine.

Maybe the fact that my house is finally getting back in order after a kitchen remodel has helped. I can see the floor of my office again. Drywall dust has been wiped off the dining room table. The kitchen is usable enough to go from clean to messy to clean again several times a day, just like normal (except with more room, and prettier!) I got to inhabit my home all alone for a short time today, and it’s so much prettier and happier. Me too.

As Hurricane Irene pounds the coast and darkens our skies, there was nowhere to go this afternoon. Nothing to do, so we moved the couch and did yoga together. It was one of the rare times I’ve looked around and though simply, without any qualifiers, “This is my life.” And I smiled.

After my husband checked the gutters, we all went for a walk in the pouring rain, happy in hats and summer heat. Soaked enough to peel off everything upon our return. I washed my hair for possibly the first time this week.

Power may be lost soon, but for now we all have bellies full of delicious roasted chicken. Pathways have opened in my home.

Thanks be to my babysitter, who took kids outside before the rains came and to a rec center after they descended.

Thanks also to my husband for earning the money to build a kitchen I can love.  And to my doctor and everyone whose skill and hands have helped my weary bones.

Thanks to wise mama writers and wise-cracking mom actors for reminding me to smile.

And thanks to the threat of natural disasters for helping me see clearer priorities, for shining light on this darkest of summer days.

May the world look familiar tomorrow.

The sunflower that wasn't eaten by deer. Just appeared this week. Maybe I should give it some credit for the sun in my heart.

I went to three yoga classes today. That’s six hours of yoga, which is more time than I have spent sleeping at least a few of the last dozen nights, in preparation for leaving for this trip and since we’ve been on it.

Once again, I’m writing from a hotel parking lot with a snoring baby in the back seat. And a more serious column will have to wait, because if I stay up too much longer, I won’t trust myself to drive back to the condo in the fog. The weather through Tuesday was gorgeous, but since then, it has rained nonstop. Not great for wandering around the Euro-style ski village or for all the attractions that were supposed to be outside. But fine for staying inside and doing yoga all day! Well, except for having the baby brought to you and dashing out to the car to nurse every 2 1/4 hours.

This is an amazing experience for which I am so grateful. It’s taken a lot from a lot of people to make happen. Thank you to everyone who has supported me along the way and especially this week! I just wish I had more time to synthesize all I’m learning and feeling.

I am going to have sore abdominal muscles tomorrow but have really been enjoying myself. The condo is a mess, and I still haven’t wished my brother and a good friend a happy birthday from five days ago or my dad  happy fathers day from four days ago. We forgot to stop our mail and our newspaper at home and haven’t figured out even when — day or time — we are leaving to return home.

But somehow after all this breath work and all this time in my body, I do believe everything will be okay.

Related posts:

Yoga festival co-founder shares her vision: Interview with Schuyler Grant

Yoga gathering celebrates “magic” on the solstice: Report from day one of Anusara Grand Circle

and, here on the blog,

First report from my mat

Yogi goes to Vermont

I’m in a rental with no wireless on a borrowed laptop. Sitting on the ledge of the TV, it’s the only one of four in the house that will work with the (extremely short) ethernet cable. Propping up my bum is a package of Seventh Generation diapers, and I’m just realizing we haven’t washed the few cloth diapers we’ve used since we arrived three days ago.

Three children are loudly jumping on the couch after making a fort out of the cushions. My husband drove our baby to sleep and dialed into work from the parking lot outside the hotel that has wireless. There are clothes and games strewn all over, and the baby is still asleep in the car, her strawberry head visible just outside the kitchen window on this chilly, rainy day because goodness knows she will never fall asleep amid this chaos. One of the three aforementioned children is now crying, so I’m guessing that Grandma needs a break.

And yet, I’m so glad I’m here. My time at the Anusara Grand Circle has already caused such an opening, through the yoga and the affirming words of the teachers. The beauty of this location is inspirational, especially since the skies were crystal blue until today. But the rain is a welcome break, as all things have a push-pull and go through a cycle. Yes, that’s part of what I’ve learned this week. Or re-learned.

I can’t wait to write more about my interview with Wanderlust co-founder and homebirth mom of three Schulyer Grant and my interview with Anusara Yoga founder John Friend, not to mention all the insights I’ve gained from classes and the joyful time we had last night hulahooping outside on the solstice.

I’m glad I got the chance to write this post about the first day of the Grand Circle for my Washington Times Communities column, and will share more as time and internet allow!

Here are three of my favorite pics so far:

Helping one another open our heartsWringing out that which doesn't serve us anymoreLengthening the side body in the first morning asana class with Anusara founder John Friend

Lengthening the side body in the first morning asana class with Anusara founder John FriendWringing out that which doesn't serve us anymore

Wringing out that which doesn't serve us anymore

I’m pleased to announce that I made it into the Top 25 Mental Wellness blogs at Circle of Moms. Thanks to everyone who voted. More details to come!

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”

It didn’t take me long to get off my game. I finished class #8 of my 10-day Yoga Challenge at 8:00 p.m. on Friday night and spent Saturday virtually yoga-free, except for one sun salutation in the morning. When I finally returned today at 4:00 p.m., it felt at the start like that 44-hour break might as well have been a year.

I tried to live like a yogi in my being during my off day, but it was difficult between planning for a kitchen remodel, scurrying to find the belly-decorating henna I was supposed to have bought ahead of time for two friends’ motherblessing, waking up my baby to go to her babysitter’s wedding, and then leaving after 45 minutes because the ceremony hadn’t started yet and I had to get to the motherblessing where I would for the first time in over a year see a friend who “broke up” with me when I was 7 months pregnant.

I do credit my yoga this past week with helping me rally and actually stay for the blessing though I was in tears upon arriving. I knew the “story” I was telling myself about myself not belonging there was not going to help my friends feel honored or loved. It would serve only my own self-sabotage. So I tried to let it go and hold onto the higher purpose of the evening.

I’m so glad I stayed. It was important to my pregnant friends, and I actually felt a little bit healed. I did have to take my exhausted baby and my hungry self home before the festivities concluded, but I made it to the end of the ceremony. As I drove home on a gorgeous June evening in a quiet car with a sleeping baby, I envisioned the little darling would play sleep catch-up and be out for the night.

Ha.

The baby appreciated the lovely evening so much, she wanted to give me a chance to enjoy it, apparently, because she woke upon returning home, which led me to the conclusion that I’d just take her for a walk when it got a dark. I was glad for the opportunity to be out but could not believe she lasted a full half-hour in the stroller before she shut her eyes at 9:00 p.m. On top of that, my five-year-old son had, for the first time in over a year, actually taken a nap, of course while I was out. Having been, in my husband’s words, “unwakeable” for two hours, the little devil was still wide awake at 10:00, outlasting his dad while hockey played on the TV despite my husband’s shut eyes.

It was like the world tipped its head to the side and laughed at us.

We made the best of it, though. Both LJ and I went to sleep in the boy’s room so we wouldn’t wake the baby, still in her stroller insert in the big bedroom. It felt a little like old times, just the three of us, and I enjoyed snuggling with my boy, a rare treat.

My kids know how to PLAY!

So, when I finally got back to class this afternoon and the teacher asked us to set an intention, the word “Play” came to me in half a beat. If I take everything completely seriously, I’m missing out on letting it be fun. Why can’t I approach all this stuff I am so passionate about from the perspective of how luck I am that I get to “play” with so many “toys?”

It can feel like a burden to have so many interests, pursuits, friends, and communities, but I really am privileged to be able to stay home and pursue them. They are luxuries I would likely pine for if I were working outside the home at a job that wasn’t miraculously addressing everything I love. It can be both a blessing and a curse to never be able to turn of my mind or to rarely say no to anything. But what if I decided to just count my blessings as blessings?

It was helpful that the teacher reminded us several times to stay true to our intention. And then, late in the class, she had us approaching crow, a pose I have never done because I have never had the upper body strength. I had to smile when, noticing that folks were not exactly moving into it easily, offered, “Just play with it.”

Yoga can be about many things, and one is joy. I’ve known for a long time that doing bridge pose does something to my adrenal glands that makes me feel awash in a warm, calm happiness. (That’s why I did it the morning my daughter was born, ostensibly to help me get back to sleep at 5:30 a.m. Instead it broke my water, and 4.5 hours later, I had a baby in my arms!)

I have to give props to the teacher for her amazing “savasana assist” in which she raised and swung my legs like a lymphatic chi machine and then pressed a few points on my feet that gave me the impression she’d found my “play” button. It was as though she’d released a rush of serotonin or oxytocin or some other great body chemistry cocktail. I would come back just for that!

So by the time I left, I felt much more integrated and back in the game. One more day to go before I have to start paying for this stuff more than $1 a day.

—–

Have you ever had a clear and profound physical or emotional change that seemed directly connected to a yoga pose?

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”

The theme of yesterday’s post was “reveal,” but I waited until this one to close that loop. I am not going to yoga on Day Eight. Instead I went back to a second class on the evening of Day Seven.

This does feel like cheating, I admit. But looking at the day, with a wedding at 2:00 and a mother blessing 4-7 p.m., and commitments to my family and my home in the morning, it is just not feasible for me to go to either of the Saturday classes offered. If there were a 6:30 Sunrise Yoga, I’d be there. But 8:30-9:45 is just too late for all we have to pack into the day, including my preparing all the food I will need to eat all day to accommodate my special grain-free, starch-free GAPS diet. My friends and family need a nourished, rested mama, and that is already a little sketchy.

So instead, I went out for a second time on Day Seven to my first evening class at Centered Yoga. It was Yin yoga, a class described by the studio as using passive poses and the breath to create a “sense of balance, harmony and inner peace.” Sign me up!

Even though I was dragging a little all day, and it was so lovely outside I might  have rather taken a walk than spend as much time in the car as in the yoga studio, I knew that I would feel better for having had the meditation and relaxing stretches. And I knew that I would feel almost I wasn’t a cheater if I doubled up on one day but certainly like a failure if I didn’t go on Saturday or Friday night. My husband was going to be home early, so it was the one time I could get to an evening class.

Aside from the yoga, which I’ll get to in a second, one eye-opening part of the experience was seeing what life is like for the hundreds of people who work in Georgetown and live in Virginia. The post-work and Friday night scenes are foreign to me these days. It felt like cultural tourism just to sit on Key Bridge at 6:15 p.m. And then, on the way home, to sit on Canal Road at 8:15 p.m. That was the most exposure I’ve had to over-20/under-30 humanity and to external combustion I’ve had in a long time. Witnessing it — while listening to classical music — was an exercise in anti-narcissism. It’s important to be reminded that your own individual issues are not being obsessed over by everyone else in the world.

But I’m avoiding talk of the class, I see.

Early on, the teacher invited us to dial back our intellect and to “turn up the volume” on our intuition. She said a lot of provocative things, and sometimes the music helped me get out of my head and let her words take me to their essence.

The first time she said, “Our hips tell our stories” — that they reveal a lifetime — I could only think of boys and things you do with them in the dark. But on the second side in pigeon pose, I thought of giving birth to my daughter, 10 months ago yesterday.

In the birth pool, I had my left knee down and my right knee bent, up and perpendicular to the ground. My labor was short — just 4.5 hours from the pop of my water when I went up into bridge pose at 5:30 a.m. to her birth at 10:08 a.m. — but I was pushing for too long. I’d been unpracticed in the art of breathing through intensity; as soon as it came, I wanted to match it. But three hours later, I was tired and the midwife’s tone got just a touch stern after my daughter’s head was out that the rest needed to come along, too. No longer feeling the inevitability of the next contraction, I had to finish on my own, and quickly.

And when I did, I was cautioned not to pull the baby too high out of the water because of her short cord. My son’s cord was so short, he’d been breech and delivered via c-section. I’m not exactly a fan of short cords. I got a little freaked out.

Then I remarked that, while my surgically-delivered baby’s head looked quite intact and non-smooshed, and this baby’s did not. It looked funny, her eyes and ears seemingly set wide apart. She also didn’t cry right away. I didn’t know what to make of this near-flaccid baby who looked rather like Gollum. My first thought was a worry that she might have Down Syndrome and that I would not know how to be a good mother to her. I worried I wouldn’t love her enough, that my heart was not big enough to envelop this being I’d spent nine months worrying about and loving and feeling move inside me. What would this reveal to me about me if I stopped short of adoration?

We can never know who are children are, but it is striking to me how much with both I just looked at them in wonder. And with my daughter, I had a nervous first two minutes wondering if anything had gone wrong, chromosomally or otherwise. Here I’d had my successful homebirth in barely enough time for my midwife to make it to my house and relieve her backup. But what would happen now? Who were we all going to be?

In yoga class, I felt my hips expand in pigeon pose and thought about my story. The teacher told us, before folding, to expose our hearts, and I found that sob at was hiding on Day Four. And I cried. Mostly it was in my body, but some tears fell on my block, the floor, my cheeks.

I hope the teacher wasn’t concerned if she noticed. It was an important release.

I came home wanting to embrace my baby and her father. They are precious.

And yet, life is not just a Lifetime movie. The baby would not go to sleep. When I pulled her off my breast, she writhed like I was sticking her with a hot poker. I gave her homeopathy, Rescue Remedy, an herbal calming tincture. My husband tried again to get her to sleep. Finally I put her on my back, did some watercolor painting for the motherblessing books, and there she lies, her neck cocked over in a way that probably feels as uncomfortable as the extra 20 pounds feels to my back while I sit with horrible posture.

But it’s what is working right now. I don’t want to challenge it. Sometimes you just have to go with that and have faith that things will all work out as they are meant to be.

Right?

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”