Day 14: Grace

After a day off from yoga completely and an intense session at Yoga Lab, I was excited to jump back into Adriene's steady and encouraging practice. Today's theme was grace, which I have something of a tumultuous relationship with. As a person who twirls around sometimes and calls herself a dancer dances sometimes, I wish that grace came more naturally to me. I am, by default, clumsy, and frequently walk into walls and spill things on the carpet.

But I knew by day fourteen that Adriene's practices are not quite so literal, and that she would likely emphasize internal grace.

We began the practice on our backs, which made me nervous, as I was terrified of going back to sleep. I have also discovered that I am a person who struggles to wake up, so folding back into savasana was far too tempting after peeling myself out of bed at 6AM. Yet as Adriene gently said, "allow yourself to be supported by Mother Earth," I cringed at her use of passive voice. But then I let go of some tension and usual morning anxiety about getting everything done, and allowed Mother Earth to support me.

This wasn't a profound moment; it was more so a gentle reminder that rest and ease feel better when you fully immerse yourself into the practice of doing nothing. When I struggle to get out of bed each morning, it's not because I'm so relaxed and want to gift myself with five more minutes of rest. Rather, it's tense and painful because I know that I should be up, but am playing a game of "how long can we delay needing to be a person in the world?"

I would probably recommend Monopoly over that game.

Laying on my back, allowing the ground to support me, I felt far more relaxed than I had hitting snooze ten times, and feeling bad about myself.

I have trouble with the notion of support. It's not that I don't let others support me. When I arrived home in April, I didn't reject the tremendous support of my family. I didn't reject a team of people checking in on me, feeding me, taking me to various appointments. I didn't reject any of it, as I wasn't necessarily in a place to go, "no, no I'm fine; I'm just going to head out on my ten mile run." But I didn't fully accept the support either. I felt guilty that I couldn't make it on my own, that my family had to spend hours sacrificing work to be there for me.

I had often thought that when someone stops feeling guilt about someone's help, they feel indifferent or take that help for granted. As it turns out, the opposite of guilt is not apathy. It's gratitude. I feel grateful for my family, and I feel grateful for my floor, doing its thing, supporting my back. "Hey floor, you're pretty cool," I thought to myself. Because if greeting your floor isn't yogic and spiritual, I don't know what is.

As we moved into some core work, Adriene noted that just because something is hard, that doesn't mean we need to grit our teeth and push ourselves to do it. We don't have to avoid all difficult tasks, but we can face them with a sense of ease and (surprise surprise) grace. Again, proving wrong my initial assumption this approach meant that the postures themselves would be easier, I felt a fire in my core, but almost enjoyed it. Like, not in a masochistic way. Another obvious epiphany perhaps, but panicking about a task doesn't make you complete in any faster. If anything, it slows you down and makes you sloppy because you're too busy worried about getting the thing done that you can't focus on the thing that needs to be done.

The biggest revelation that I had was not during Adriene's practice, but immediately after. I had planned on jogging (which I hate), but decided instead to do more yoga (which I don't). Historically, when I've done a home practice, I raced through it in order to save time. I skipped the warmup, the beginning philosophical musings, and I certainly never did savasana. I would do the same half-assed postures repeatedly, and I wouldn't build on a sequence. Adriene often makes the distinction between doing a posture and being in the posture. I'm not entirely sure I was ever in the posture until beginning this series.

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So when I began my free-form practice, I lit a candle, grabbed a blanket, and channeled Adriene in my head. Literally. With each posture, I thought about what she would say. I dedicated the practice to my own theme: joy. With each inhale, I breathed in joy, and with each exhale, I let go of pain. I allowed myself time to sink deeply into each posture. It really felt like I was being guided by a teacher. I un-ironically thought things like "this is a delicious practice." Many of my previous blog posts contained messages that I understood on an intellectual level, but this I understood on a visceral level. I allowed myself to be guided by this inner Adriene.

Perhaps I'm starting to feel voices in my head and should get that checked out, or this is the inner teacher that everyone has been raving about. When I let myself listen to that inner teacher, I actually had a more intense practice than I ever did when I yoga-ed just to quickly exercise before doing more important things (namely journaling about whichever boy I was obsessed with at the time). And it certainly allowed me to feel more relaxed and prepared for the day. 

I talk a lot about agency, both in my blog and my academic work, and this "unguided guided" practice is a form of agency. I took what I learned from my teachers and created a sequence of my own. This is certainly a teeny step towards being self-assured, but it gives me hope that if I can create a sequence that feels good for me, maybe I can create a life of happiness, joy, and grace.

Namaste. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yilBM-v5lho