Yoga of Heartbreak

It said that yoga begins the moment you want to leave the posture that is also true of relationships. If you love someone but there is struggle and even pain it’s just like being in a difficult yoga pose, you have 2 choices: you can get out of there, back to the safety and comfort of child’s pose, or a friends couch or a bottle of wine. Or you can stay and work, you can listen to your body and learn how to adjust your self so that the strain eases some but you also keep going deeper into the asana or deeper into the love between you and your partner.

I’ve been doing yoga for a few years now and there are still many asana I haven’t mastered, in fact full pigeon I think is something I will only experience in my dreams (yes I dream about yoga poses). But I still work towards opening my body because I know that it’s not getting into that picture perfect magazine cover expression of the pose, it’s about all the work that I do on the way there. It’s accepting my practice each day for what it is. And each day brings its own challenges. Just like a relationship. To love someone so fully that you accept exactly where you are each day for what it is, celebrating the moments that where so precious and looking forward to the moments not yet created. So there you are on your mat all warmed up and energized as you begin to move into that asana when you hit the edge, you are questioning whether or not to go further. Should you draw back and do a few more preparatory poses, did you exert all your effort already and can’t push any more or do you push too far and fall out of the practice all together. The metaphor should be self explanatory. This is where your yoga begins, the working it out part, the stick to, the good faith effort because you know deep down that this yoga stuff is good for you just like you know this relationship is good for you. But then sometimes it’s not.

What if a relationship or an asana just isn’t for you? What if you’ve been working for something but it remains unavailable to you. This is also where yoga begins. Yoga is also acceptance. Sometimes there are things our bodies just can’t obtain, so this time yoga isn’t moving deeper it’s being where you are, learning your lesson and moving on. Sometimes in class I tell my students when they come to a difficult asana to ‘wrap it up in love’ and try it again. And that’s what I’ve been doing in my yoga off the mat, when the difficulties arose I would wrap my whole relationship up in love and try again. I wanted to love my relationship into working just like I want to love my thoracic spine into a beautiful back bend.  But it’s not time for back bending and it’s not time for pushing anymore. There will always be love around my former relationship, there will always be quite a lot of love in fact but it’s time to step away and accept that this practice is now the practice of letting go. This yoga of heartbreak is about observing and healing and eventually growing. Maybe one day pigeon will be less elusive and maybe one day my thoracic spine will open enough so that this heart of mine can find some more love. But for now it’s me, my dog, and the mat; Om Y’all.