practice, practice, practice

At the beginning of the summer, I had dreams of being able to lift up and float back to chataranga dandasana in the both the surya namaskaras and from the seated poses, float through to seated from adho mukha svanasana, drop back into urdva dandasana and come up on my own, and so much more. Ignorantly, I was sure that my ability to practice consistently through the summer IN the mysore room would allow for this magical growth. Of course, it’s never quite how you figure it in your head. I did a great job of practicing 6 days each week all summer long.

But all is yet to come — at least all that I previously dreamed of.

It’s okay. I am proud of the hard work and dedication that I have put towards my practice. Both strength and flexibility has developed in every part of my body. I’ve built up my endurance and have found neutrality in poses previously causing me panic. In addition, I now feel like I have a path on which to navigate to begin to change areas of my body which I previously thought were unchangeable. For instance, I now feel that I am able to create more awareness of the right side of my body where I previously had very little due to residual effects of an autoimmune response which lead to neuron sheath demyelination that occurred in my early teenage years. Although I do not have any more feeling in my right foot than before, I have gained awareness of the anatomy and alignment upstream of my foot that plays into the positioning of the foot. The awareness of the patterns that need to be broken, regardless of whether I can actually feel that my foot is turning out, creates an important chain of self checking from the foot to pelvis and visa verse. I still have the assistants coming over to straighten my turned out foot and I continue to wobble in my standing balance poses like the earth is quaking below me. I’m working on it.

Establishing a 6 days a week practice routine has benefited me greatly in many ways. When I am unable to complete my morning practice, I miss it all day long. And now that school is back in session, and I am being pulled in more directions, my practice is all the more important. Responsibilities require me to be creative with my time to make it all work.

This morning, for example, I was showered and ready to go by 5:30 am. My son’s alarm does not sound & shake until 6 am. So instead of sitting idle, I began my practice at home. By the time I’d completed both surya namaskaras, his alarm was going off. After making sure that he was awake, I left home. In mysore, I repeated the surys and more easily moved on to the rest of my practice.

Tomorrow is a different story, a different game. It’s my turn to shuttle my son and the other students in our carpool to school. I will have to get on my mat extra early AND move through the sequence without any extra fuss to get in a good practice.

This is just the beginning of the struggles to keep up my practice. My son is already struggling to keep up in a highly academic environment. As the school year intensifies, I will need to find more and more ways to support him. It will be all the more important for me to practice being patient and attentive on the mat and in my role as mother.

And so I practice, practice, practice. I am motivated, for in the end, I know it’s good for me…and my son.