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”

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”

What would happen if I did yoga for 10 days in a row?
I don’t mean just a home practice. But if I went to a yoga class every day for 10 days?
Improved health? A clearer mind? A more settled heart? A bigger smile? A deeper sense of loving kindness? An enhanced sense of intentionality?
To true yogis, ten days of class must sound far from revolutionary, I would imagine. But since it took me six months after my daughter was born to even get to one yoga class, it’s a big deal.
(And no, I never made it to a Mommy and Me class with this baby #2.
Not once.
I schlep the poor girl around so much to deal with her brother’s preschool commute, it always seemed like a waste of free time to drag her out again when I could get a better practice in at home. If only I actually stopped to do that.)
There’s always a rationalization for not getting to class — childcare, fatigue, distance, traffic, cost, childcare, last night’s sleep, conflicting needs to cook or just plain enjoy being with my kids.

I’m trying to live free of rationalizations — otherwise known as excuses — if only for just 10 days. If Julie can cook like Julia for a year, I can do down dogs for a week and a half.

The immediate impetus is Centered Yoga Studio. This studio in the Palisades area of NW DC offers an unbeatable 10 unlimited days of yoga for $10 for first-time clients. Wow. My first class was a lovely “Gentle Yoga” class that was more active than restorative but slow and, well, gentle. It’s probably just the right speed for me.
But I was drawn to the studio because they offer an Anusara-inspired class three mornings a week. My sister-in-law is a certified Anusara instructor, and she’s teaching  at Wanderlust, a huge yoga conferences coming up in June in Vermont. We are meeting her, my husband’s brother, and their two kids there. Grandma is even coming to help out!

I thought I might splurge on a ticket to join them in attending the Anusara Grand Circle, three days of yoga right before Wanderlust (which goes two days past when we need to leave).

As my brother-in-law pointed out, though, I’m in no shape to do a ton of intense yoga — literally because I’m out of shape and also because I have a 10-month-old who is still exclusively breastfed (and I do mean breast, not bottle).  The days until the event are dwindling, and I am still weighing my options for how much cash to plunk down for how much of the experience of one or both of these events. I wish I could split the bill with my husband or get a pro-rated breastfeeding mom (and blogger!) rate!
But whatever I decide to do, the time to be in nature and do yoga with my husband and mother-in-law around to be with the kids is an amazing opportunity. So is this Ten Days.

And so, I get serious.

What this commitment means is that my physical body as a whole is as important as any other volunteer commitment I have or writing I want to do, and is as important as my crazy-high-maintenance diet to my overall health and wellbeing.
It means I believe in possibility. It means I see myself as an agent, not a victim at the mercy of babysitters. I will make it happen, even if I have to fight traffic to get to an evening class and even if my husband kind of balked at the commitment when I proposed it.
I need to see who I am when I’ve spent 60-90 minutes each day breathing. Seriously, mindfully, breathing. When I’ve awakened awareness of muscles I forgot I had and allowed my organs to shine. When I’ve felt the connection to the energy of the universe.
A few weeks ago I bought a Groupon for Unity Woods, the Iyengar studio where I studied for three years before I got pregnant in 2005. Getting back even to two classes there (with Vermont in mind) was profoundly enjoyable and inspiring. It was like coming home to myself.
It is so clear to me that yoga is medicinal. Yes, it may be hard to get to class with a baby who doesn’t want to separate and a husband who gets home after his son needs to have had dinner. And yes, when these cheap classes have run out, it will be another financial commitment if I decide to keep going — a higher cost for one class than for  a whole month’s membership at the gym I never go to.

But for 10 days, I am hoping we can make this work.

Because if it does, I think I’ll be both healthier physically and also open to believing in a whole lot of good.

—-

I did manage to take the kids to one family class over spring break, which I wrote about here, and another recent class. I’ll write more in detail about each one soon, and I’m hoping to launch a series of profiles of family-friendly and otherwise interesting yoga opportunities in the D.C. area. Stay tuned!

Read on in this series:

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”

Before I had even cracked the spine of the book Good Enough is the New Perfect: Finding Happiness and Success in Modern Motherhood, it got soaked. For at least the fourteenth time, I’d failed to screw the top on my new glass water bottle on correctly, and it spilled all over the purse I took when I left the baby asleep with a sitter to buy organic Romaine lettuce and go to the Hair Cuttery.

“Good enough,” I thought, “does not cut it when containers of water are involved. Perfect is required. This book is wrong.”

But really, I knew that the problem was all about me: I hadn’t been paying attention when I was screwing the lid on while drinking and driving (water, that is). If I’d just focused on one thing at a time, there would be no soggy books.

That’s pretty much the message of the book:

Choose what is important to you. Pursue it. Let the other stuff slide. Happiness will ensue.

It makes a lot of sense, and I’ve been moving toward that kind of narrowing. Well, maybe it’s more like a re-seeing of things I complain about for how they actually do work toward my big goals rather than thwart other smaller goals.

I'm calling this (uncropped) self-portrait "good enough" because reminds me that I'd run a half-marathon that morning. And that I'm a mommy goddess.

The book also helped me see that I am not as conflicted and frustrated as I might be if I had expected to go back to work after having my first child. But I had gotten to the point teaching high school English where I knew I simply couldn’t do it and be healthy. My struggles with my thyroid and celiac disease had gotten me clear on the fact that I needed to follow a different path.

So even though I had been like a lot of the over-achieving, perfectionist moms in the book, I knew I would just have to let some things go if I was going to be healthy and get pregnant. Once I got pregnant, I was even more ready to be done working and just be home with my son.

The whole time, however, I’ve wanted to pursue my own interests and eventually a little work. I started a writing group when he was four months old, started tutoring when he was a year old, and started a chapter of Holistic Moms when he was two and a half. It seems sometimes like my interests have multiplied, and there are times when I wonder if I will ever balance being the kind of mom I want to be with being an individual who feels all her needs are met.

Reading about so many moms who continued to want to “have it all” after giving birth, though, I realized that most of my conflicts are not really conflicts. I am privileged and lucky to be able to stay home (even if earning money does feel really good), and most of my interests dovetail more than I give them credit for. This book showed me that there are a lot of internal battles I could be having but am not. I think I may indeed be close to embracing the “new perfect.”

The commitment to health and well-being that I made in 2004 remains. It’s okay that this is my top priority and that things like fashion (for me or my kids) fall to the wayside. If looking good starts to become part of my broader goal (which it might, since “beauty” is my 2011 catchphrase), then swell. It should feel fairly effortless and, in fact, fun if it really aligns with my values.

But for now, I’m just going to try to honor that food and health — for me, for my family, and for my community — are the things I care most about. So the choices I make will reflect those values, and I don’t have to feel bad about not pursuing things that don’t.

In this light, “good enough” does sound rather freeing!

Disclosure: As a member of From Left to Write book club, I received a copy of this book for review. All opinions are my own. You can read other members’ posts inspired by Good Enough Is The New Perfect on book club day, May 10 at From Left to Write book club.

Additional note: It seems appropriate to give a shout out to two other moms who live and breathe “making it work”:

Washington Post staff writer Brigid Schulte has written about motherhood and time management for the Post Magazine and is working on a book about it. Two days ago, on Mother’s Day, she published an article about flexible work arrangements and included a profile of Jennifer Folsom, who I know from The Enterprising Moms. Jenn was the winner last year of the Hot Mommas Project, of which I was a finalist.

Check out this great article, and let the Post know these are important issues to cover!