Putting Off Yoga: A Bizarre Form of Self-Torture?

Rest quietly in what you know is true. Then act.







April 2009

For the last fifteen years I have been wanting to do yoga every day, and with the exception of a few brief periods have been unable to make this happen. This has been a desire because I know--in my bones and muscles, and from observing older people who have done yoga regularly--that this is a superior way to keep the body and mind flexible and strong as long as possible.

I started learning yoga when I was 15 from a chemistry teacher at my school. She ran a small class in the winter for those of us not involved in other sports. It was a fringe sport, an "alternative" sport, one that merited a room but only a classroom that wasn't in use. Still, we learned a lot that winter. Iyengar yoga. I learned to relax from the immense stress of the long winter in a pressure-cooker private school. I mean, really relax. Like, relax until things really didn't bother me. Relax until the mind was quieter and didn't worry unnecessarily. Relax enough to sleep better so I was more alert when I woke up in the morning. Great life lessons to get early.

Fast-forward fifteen years and there's Carol. Part of of her retirement plan is to take the 6 a.m. hour-and-a-half yoga intensive every morning at the local Iyengar studio. Back then, when I took that class for a month, she had the body, energy and youthful outlook of a healthy 35 year old. She's in her seventies now and can stand on her head.

Despite all this—and despite wanting to—I've been unable to effect a daily practice. Absolutely unable. Every single day I think, "This is what I should be doing. This is what I want to do." Nothing. Not even five minutes. I utterly lack the discipline.

Have you ever wanted something that good for you for that long and put it off indefinitely? I'm beginning to think that living this way is a bizarre form of self-torture.

Re-alignment

"The atoms that make up your body were once forged inside stars, and the causes of even the smallest event are virtually infinite and connected with the whole in incomprehensible ways."
— Tolle, A New Earth, p. 197



Still February 28
Easton, MD

Looking this week at a beautiful book of Gustave Baumann’s prints.

Looking at photos of him and his studio and his work I feel wistful that I never pursued the printmaker’s life. I abandoned art because it abandoned me, or maybe I just abandoned it because there were too many obstacles and too much discouragement. I’ve never been great with discouragement or obstacles, or jealous people. I get dissuaded far too easily. Or maybe I didn’t really want it. Maybe this longing for art school that bugged me for a long time was just a fantasy and not a real desire.

But looking at Baumann’s art and his studio I also feel grateful that I have abandoned the internet this year in search of a more authentic daily existence in which I used to tread, along with a whole lot of other people.

I could re-align my life with some of my old goals.

Writing this book is certainly tapping the creativity in a way that hasn’t happened in a long time.