Doing what is “best” vs. Striving towards your physical best

Today I had an amazing revelation about yoga and my practice. Lately I have been reading Iyengar’s Light on Yoga book and pondering the philosophy behind the practice. As you may have noticed in the last post, I have also been struggling with my healthy lifestyle intention. A lot of my internal dilemmas have been centering around the ideas of A- weight lost and B- catching up to my former physical yoga glory. It is challenging not to be able to move in and out of poses like I use to, however I think I have been missing the whole point.

So in class today, I asked my instructor Nicole for some heart opening poses (aka backbends) because I was feeling fatigued. Even since I restarted taking yoga, I noticed I was resisting going into backbends. In the past I was backbend queen, so it is interesting that I have not been pushing for more backbends. Anyhow, we get into backbending and all of the sudden I was pushing myself to go further and further into the poses; even to the point where I requested to stay and do one more variation. Normally I wouldn’t see this behavior as problematic. Hey if you are rocking a pose and want to take it further, by all means do. However, I was not very stable in those poses and I think I was pushing myself to reach the backbends I was able to do in the past (you know, when I was practicing EVERY day for months…). Seeing that I already have an injury and that I could have further injured myself, I have to wonder, what is the best for me physically and mentally?

I am in a yogi conundrum. On one hand, I want to physically work to my max; on the other, I want to heal my ankle and my wellbeing. I am starting to believe that those goals are not mutually exclusive but to attain both, my mental wellbeing needs to stress a little bit more. I feel like I go on and on about yoga and weight, but I seem to encounter a lot of blogs, sites, etc that promote yoga for weight lost. I don’t want to bitch and moan about this idea because I am sure there are a lot of great benefits to having yoga as part of your weight lost program (http://thefatyogi.com/ is a great example of that), BUT I feel there is more to yoga than that. Again, if I just wanted to lose weight I would choose running, swimming, or fuck- even pilates. Yoga would have no meaning for me. I think a lot of the folks who use yoga in that way are missing the point. Weight lost isn’t the problem; it is WHY you want to lose weight to begin with. I have been struggling with body issues for the majority of my life, so it is not as “simple” as losing weight; I need to become accepting of who I am as a person, as a body. That is why I go to yoga.

My practice today reminded me that I am still holding myself back from that type of acceptance and that I need to put more LOVE into my practice. I am not looking for the quick fix; I want this shit to last.

Reaching for former glory