After traveling last week for work, Steve took today off to hang out with me and the babes. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound.
We started the day by taking a yoga class at the brand new Y that just opened down the street from our house (and by “our house,” of course I mean my mom’s house where we’re all joyfully living together . . . still). The Y has a little childcare program, so we dropped off L&L and headed upstairs for an hour of heaven on earth. That saved a wretch like me.
I haven’t officially exercised (as in, in a class or at a gym) for months and months. My normal day’s activities—hoisting and lugging two thirty pounders—has been exertion enough. But my body has been calling out for some mind-body-soul-spirit congruence in the form of a gentle activity that allows for both physical success and mental space. And, how can I forget, a lot of breathing. Yoga seemed like the perfect choice.
For most of my life, I’ve pushed large weights around and pounded my body quite a bit. I like that feeling, the holy practice of sweating buckets (as I write about in more detail in Found Art’s chapter 9, “building up”). But ever since I had the babies, ever since I survived carrying two seven-and-a-half pound babies full term, ever since I survived the gnarlyness of that c-section, ever sense I survived the year + it took to get the weight off, I can’t seem to demand too much of my body quite yet. After all it’s done for me, after all it’s delivered, I’ve felt the need to give it some time to heal, some time to reboot, a Sabbath.
So this morning was my first time in a long time darkening the doorway of a gym class. “Take a big ‘ol belly breath,” our instructor instructs. I puff up, fill up, and sense the life oozing back into me. I once was lost, but now I’m found.
What follows is poses, focused on opening our shoulders and chest, so that we are “perhaps more able to receive,” she says. Yes, I’m receiving.
And when the instructor leads us in the face-down final breathing, “releasing what I no longer need,” I release the subtle guilt I’m carrying over not pushing myself to work harder, to sweat more, to pound the treadmill, to kill myself metaphorically. And when she has us sit up, legs crossed, palms together in prayer, and she says “We thank our bodies for working hard this morning. We thank ourselves for getting us here no matter what it took. And most of all we thank each other for mutual support. Namaste,” I utter “Namaste” back with gusto.
Steve turns toward me and almost imperceptibly rolls his eyes (as they twinkle in my direction).
“I feel a blog post coming on,” he says.
Was blind, but now I see.
What’s something you need to release that you no longer need?
