HomeFlow Yoga

The Hardest Pose Is Showing Up

I just came upstairs from thirty-five minutes of yoga. I feel fantastic. Clear-headed, strong, ten years younger, weirdly generous toward all of humanity.

I almost didn’t do it.

And by “almost,” I mean I spent the entire day deliberating. Negotiating. Building a legal case for and against my own yoga practice like both attorneys in the courtroom. I know the benefits. I love my practice. And it still took me all day to walk down those stairs.

So if you think the struggle means something is wrong with you — hi. Welcome. Pull up a mat.

The all-day negotiation

Here’s what the dodge actually looks like at my house. It’s not one decision. It’s forty of them, spread across the whole day like a bad board meeting that never adjourns. I’ll practice after this email. After lunch. It’s too late for a morning practice now, so maybe this afternoon. Well, the afternoon got away from me. The mat isn’t asking for much. Thirty-five minutes. Somehow I can negotiate against thirty-five minutes for nine straight hours — which, if you’re counting, is terrible math.

The two endings

Every one of these days ends one of two ways.

Ending one: I don’t practice. And I’m not just disappointed — there’s a real self-loathing that moves in for the evening. I let myself down in slow motion, one deferral at a time, and I watched myself do it.

Ending two: I finally give in and get on the mat. And I feel fantastic. Better than I’ve felt in years. Powerful. And then — because apparently I cannot be left unsupervised with my own thoughts — I berate myself a little anyway. Not for practicing. For the delay. For all those hours of negotiating that were completely unnecessary and quietly ate up half the day.

Notice that in both endings, the villain is never the yoga. The yoga is perfect every single time. The villain is the negotiation.

Today, for example

Tonight my husband was downstairs waiting for me, and I could not put the computer down. I was — I’m not proud of this — genuinely bitter that I “had to” stop what I was doing. Bitter! About yoga! An activity no one was forcing me to do, that I chose, that I love, that has carried me through some of the hardest seasons of my life.

Thirty-five minutes later I loved it so much I came upstairs and wrote this.

It’s a power struggle, and both sides are you

That’s the strangest part of a home practice that nobody warns you about. There’s no class time. No teacher taking attendance. No studio door closing at 6:02. There’s just you, negotiating with you, all day long, in a house full of very convincing reasons to do something else.

Knowing the benefits doesn’t exempt you from the struggle. Loving your practice doesn’t exempt you. I know the benefits the way I know my own name, I love my practice more than almost anything I do for myself — and the struggle is still real. It’s not a knowledge problem. It’s not a commitment problem. It’s just the hardest pose there is, and it happens before the first breath.

The kinder ending

I’m working on skipping the last part — the little lecture I give myself about the hours I wasted deliberating. Because here’s the thing: the day I finally practice is a good day. Full stop. The negotiation didn’t ruin it; it’s just the toll I paid on the way to the mat. Maybe with practice, the toll gets smaller. Maybe some days it doesn’t. Either way, I showed up. That was the hard pose. Everything after it was the easy part.

So if you spent all day getting to your mat today: you got there. That counts. That might be the whole practice.

— LoriAnn