the list of now

Max at the end of my yoga mat.

A while ago, inspired by reading blogs by people training to be yoga instructors and a good friend who started training to run a marathon, I decided I was going to commit to practicing yoga every day.

The health effects and brain effects of this decision were immediate and compounding, and yet, I didn’t stick to my goal. What happened in my life was indeed a lot more yoga, but not daily. I did some form of light stretching or meditation daily, but ended up doing yoga only about 3 or 4 days out of the week. Not bad, but not my goal. Not what I had said I wanted to commit myself to.

So I kind of felt shitty about this, but kept going, kept trying and still enjoyed what I was doing. The point of this is not to beat up on myself for not doing it right the first time, but it does bother me that I set a goal for purposes of measurement and end up with nothing to measure. That’s the point of making a structured decision right?

Long story short: a month ago I hurt my back. I bent or twisted or something and reactivated an injury in the discs of my lower back from a decade ago. It is something that had haunted me from time to time, but nothing serious until now. Now, I’ve been in pain for much of the last month. Sitting is irritating and my job entails hours of sitting. It’s been a struggle. I’ve been going to a chiropractor and the other thing that really helps the healing process is … yoga every day. Multiple times a day in fact.

I’m not going to go out on the limb that says this was more than a coincidence in terms of any kind of cosmic kick-in-the ass. (Although I don’t believe that’s totally impossible). What I think is far more likely is that just I knew I needed this. I knew my body was needing to be retrained and reconditioned and so I set a goal. A goal I was unable to keep in practice until something forced me to.

So this back pain. It feels like a reminder of something I forgot how to do in my life. And I feel really lucky for that. I feel grateful for this pain.

And in terms of measurable goals, now I have a little over a month under my belt and it’s easier for this to be something I just do every day. As I get my core strength back and more flexibility in my back, I do more yoga. More postures. Longer sessions. More variation. My practice is progressing naturally, without me having to plan that or commit to it.

I think I make the mistake of trying to overplan “better”. Trying to map out how to get to “better”. When this kind of thing – for me that works well in action only – is maybe what “better” looks like for me.

My back isn’t all “better”. It’s healing slowly. I complain about it daily. I get frustrated often. I was also doing more “impressive” structured yoga a few times a week – doing whole videos, not limited poses – before this happened. So that annoys me too!

But I think I’m realizing that wasn’t the point. It wasn’t making me happy. It wasn’t my goal. I can’t complete an hour class or video again yet, but the poses I’m doing are improving a little at a time. Measurable goals.

And now I have a visual reminder/reward that I’ve been doing the thing I wanted to be doing, every day, a few times a day – I inadvertantly trained my dog to do it with me.

Max started coming over to me when I got my yoga mat out. I said to him (because I talk to him like a human, shut up, you do it too!) “It’s time to stretch now!”

Now when I say the word “stretch”, he does a little stretch before laying down next to the mat. When I roll onto my back, he rolls onto his back next to me. That’s what he’s doing in the picture above.

I’m not making this up. He’s starting doing this every time. Other people have seen him do it!

So this is my little lesson this Fall I think. I’m not into big motivation, big changes, big enlightenment!!!! I’m not trying to be “better” here.

I just doing my thing. My back is healing. My brain is less muddled when I do yoga. My dog has a new hobby that might just change his life.

(or at least he looks really cute doing it and makes me smile when it hurts)

This is all good.