The Yoga Of Quitters

I love that yoga still surprises me. After 10+ years being a student of yoga it can still sneak into my life and just floor me. So how is yoga surprising me right now? Yoga is allowing me to be a scared, self-doubting little quitter. Or put another way yoga is allowing me to be a good mama.

You see, after closing my studio a few years ago, suddenly and pretty much out of the blue I’m going back to teaching. I thought when I closed my studio it would be a lot longer before I ever taught again, I was in fact trying to change careers all together. I wanted a job that was steady, something that would allow me to work from home every once in a while, take a sick day or even a vacation! And all because I was planning on moving off somewhere and starting a family once I had a shiny new degree in Graphic Design.  Then I got knocked up! See, the planning a family thing was a solo project and I hadn’t been dating my fella very long and are where taking some serious anti-baby precautions.  But I guess my son really wanted to get born!

I carried my growing baby along with my art supplies and USB drives all through the next semester at school and despite him being only 3 weeks old I went back the following semester. I still had in my head the image of a new job, of one day living out in the country working from home and taking care of my critters (human and animal). So to me it seemed like I needed to plow through school at top speed so I could get my degree and get living.

Then I got sick and my getting sick led directly to my baby getting sick. So I was missing school trying to get well then hurrying to catch up then getting sick again because of stress and all the meds I was on were making the baby unhappy and colicky and… well it was all to much. I dropped out of the semester. It was heartbreaking. It felt like that last little piece of my non-mother identity was gone. I was a…gasp…stay at home mom! But it worked. I stopped getting sick, my boy got over his colic and we got bored. Not like there wasn’t anything to do bored, I was still trying to keep the house and just cause he wasn’t colicky anymore doesn’t mean my boy wasn’t still demanding and a nap fighter and all around tiny tiny dictator (moms, you know what I mean and that I mean it with love and laughter). No, I mean bored in the “I haven’t spoken to an adult in over 36 hours kind of bored.” So I did one thing to help me grasp onto a shred of my former self, one thing to possibly get me out of the house every once in a while, one thing that seemed healthy and not about the baby or my fella or the laundry list of things I “should” be doing; I asked my prenatal yoga teacher to keep me in mind if she ever needed a sub.

She didn’t, she needed someone to take over the class, she was giving it up and did I want to it?

YES! Yes, I want it! But wait, how can I be a stay at home mom, full time graphic design student AND teach yoga. Well the answer is I can’t. And right now I don’t want to. See I’m starting to doubt myself. As the semester I dropped out of chugged along I saw my former classmates excelling, making beautiful and smart things! I felt so insecure about my abilities. How would I ever catch up? Would it be worth it? Am I cut out to be a designer when there are so many other amazingly talented people out there? Right now, I do not feel like I am.

And you know what? Yoga makes that ok. I know I’ll finish my degree in time but having a job, having a Community that is more accepting of my massive life change is a huge relief. This opportunity takes so much pressure off me, I don’t have to hurry up and plow through these next few years so I can get a job and be a good mom. No, I can be a good mom now! I won’t feel like a burden to my partner (which is self put upon, he doesn’t feel that way!) and I can give some energy back to place that has been so good to me since I got pregnant.  I can be a quitter and still be a good yogi. Thanks yoga, you sneaky little life changer you!

Sunday Funnies

Morning Quickie: I Forgot How To Teach

Right now my son is on the floor, cooing contentedly, exploring his toes and his ultra plush blanket; baby neurons exploding with joy. And I’m at the table in extreme pain and searching google for some magical technique I’ve never tried to unclog milk ducts. The guilt I feel for not being down there with him is almost as painful as my swollen breast, I can feel the tears starting to build up behind my eyes.

There is so much to motherhood that is painful. So much. And so very much we pile up on ourselves. This guilt that is turning over in my gut it entirely self imposed. My son is happy, believe me he’d let me know if he wasn’t.  Yeah, I could get down there with him and get him giggling by “playing” with him and his blanket. But would that be better, would I be “teaching” him more by stroking the blanket over him so he can start feeling his body. Or will he gain more by observing and experimenting on his own.

The answer is both. Both are the correct choice. And I need to remember that. I am home with my son all day, we play together, giggle, and learn and then sometimes I put him in his bouncy chair and let him be entertained by his floor mobile, or a spatula or even (cue tragic music) a video. And my son is fine, he’s thriving in fact! He’s hitting all of his developmental markers, he’s a generally happy baby even though we do have some colic battles.

How did I forget this. As I teacher I know this. You can not always be teaching, student shave lessons they need to learn on their own. But as a teacher your job, your hope, is that on the mat you have given them the tools to facilitate their own learning when they are not on their mat. So shouldn't i be doing the same with a baby?

I write in metaphors a lot, it  helps me sort things out and relay what I’m trying to say. So for me I often think yoga, the practice of asana that is, as the biggest metaphor for life. That while I’m practicing and while I’m teaching that yoga is mimicking life. The challenges, the boring bits, the moments of elation are all the same emotions as in real life. I used to know this more deeply, I used to live it and I’m going to start doing that again. I'm going to do use it on the mat and as a mother. Right after I go giggle on the floor with my son.

My Core, My Center, My Strength. (Intro)

Where is my core, my center, my strength?

I gave birth a little over three months ago and these are the questions I’m asking myself right now. They are all the same question but each has a different answer I think. Yeah, it confuses me too but mom brain has a way of making the pieces just fuzzy enough that they seem to fit together even if you can’t articulate how to others.

The core of my physically being is, well, gone. My abdominal muscles spent nine months getting stretched out and floppy then cut open when my son had to be born cesarean. Everything seems harder without my core. For the first few months things like sitting up or bending over or lifting anything seemed tricky if not dangerous. But now that I’ve healed from the incision the lack of strength is showing. Especially when I took my first yoga class last weekend. For as body conscious as I am I realized just how much I’d been “faking” it. It’s pretty amazing how incorrectly we can use our bodies when compensating for muscle loss or injury.

My strength. Well I see this as a two-sided coin: there is my physical strength and my emotional strength. Both seem like distant allies, comrades that once stood by me and helped protect me but maybe got lost somewhere on the journey.  You can read all the books, listen to your mother and other moms, and try to anticipate but absolutely nothing can prepare you for the relentlessness of being a first time parent. Things that were so easy one time with my soldiers of strength by me seem almost unbearable. Some days those things include climbing the basement stairs and listening to music. Shortness of breath and tears are all to frequent.

And finally my center has shifted. Well not so much shifted as disappeared. Where am I? Who am I? What was sleep like? Of all the ups and downs of pregnancy and motherhood this one is the most baffling. One day I knew my body, I knew my needs and my limits and now all of that has changed and I’m struggling to find answers.

So I’m getting back on my mat. I took my first yoga class since birth last weekend and I could feel my brain firing again. I got to know my limbs and feel my strength (or lack of strength more appropriately) again. Yoga reminded me that with each asana, and each breath we open up the chance for understanding. So I’m taking that knowledge and I’m going to explore them here in 3 parts: My core, my center, my strength both on the mat and off, both as a mother and a woman.

Stay tuned if you are interested.

Teaser: I'll get better at this, I swear!

As excited as I am about making writing a priority in my life again, it doesn't change the fact that I have a fairly demanding infant and all that life stuff we have that gets in the way of us doing the fun stuff. So I thought I'd just tease y'all!

I did make it to my first yoga class since the birth of my son and I am writing about that experience but I'm not done yet. However the dharma talk the instructor gave at the beginning of class reminded me of one of my very first post ever. So here is the teaser of more blogs to come:

Podcast Life of a Yogi

back to the blogosphere.

Tomorrow I do my first baby and me yoga class and to be honest, I’d rather it be without the baby. I love my son, like a lot, like the way all mothers love their kids but this mama-hood stuff is hard! I’m 3 months in and currently dealing with A COMPLETE LACK OF IDENTITY! So yeah, I want to go to yoga alone and feel my body and connect with my breath and honor the healing that is still going on inside me. But like the old yoga saying goes “the yoga begins when you want to leave the pose.”

So hears to exploring the yoga of motherhood.

To be continued…

Sunday Funnies

We can use humor to take the sting out of talking about hings that really, really, bug yoga teachers! Here is the series of yoga etiquette videos put together by Tejas Yoga.