I’m not a fan of New Year’s resolutions. It’s pretentious, I know, but they just don’t work for me. And I don’t hate them. I actually enjoy the collective sigh of fresh optimism. Every year in January, everyone is eager and positive. However, every year I refuse to make New Year’s resolutions because a cynical part of me knows it’s just hype, and I wouldn’t have any real intention to accomplish a resolution. They would just be words caught up in the wave.
But this year it was different.
Bodybuilding left me with a lot of nagging aches and pains. I can’t completely blame the sport. It was a combination of my bad habits exacerbated by the stress intense training put on my body. After giving birth to my son, I was eager to shed some baby weight but every attempt at weight training hurt. The muscles in my body were so tight and knotted, I felt 10 years older than my age. Discouraged by my fitness outlook I turned to yoga for relief.
I started adding yoga into my weight lifting routine 1 day a week and the pain got worse. I was hobbling out of bed in the morning so I scaled back my weight training to do yoga more frequently. Since I felt good after yoga I reasoned that if I did yoga the day after lifting I could band-aid the strain of weight training and champion my way back into shape. . . my body sternly disagreed. One day as I got ready to lift at the gym I went down the list:
I can’t do legs today, my hamstring hurts so bad I can barely bend over.
I can’t do back either. This spasm is so bad it’s giving me a headache.
Forget about shoulders. That will only add to the tightness in my traps, which will make the back spasm worse.
It was clear to me that I had an issue in almost every part of my body. I had exhausted all the work-arounds. Lifting would have to be put on hold.
But what about my baby weight?
I have to lose this baby weight.
I decided I would not lift anymore until I dealt with the nagging aches and pains. Yoga would have to do for now. To ensure that I stayed active enough to drop some pounds I picked the most intense yoga sessions I could handle.
I didn’t realize that through these forceful and unforgiving goals I set for myself I was actually putting myself, my true self, on the backburner. And I was to come face to face with it all on the mat, when I resolved to do a year of yoga.
By the end of 2019, when I reluctantly chose to do yoga to fix my injuries, I came across a 30 day yoga journey from my favorite yoga YouTuber on her channel Yoga with Adriene. I thought it was the perfect way to start my own yoga journey. As the end of the yoga journey came near, I thought “what would happen if I did yoga every day for a year?” and since it looked like my lifting career was on an indefinite hold (and I needed to lose weight anyway) I signed myself up for the challenge.
I studied a little bit about yoga, and was curious about this concept that yoga is more than an exercise, it’s an entire way of life. One thing that stuck out to me was this idea: how the mat mirrors your life. And if we can show love and patience and breathe on the mat, we can have that same centering effect on our lives. It seemed like a lifestyle that resonated with me so I began to grow more excited about my year of yoga.
What would I find? How will I grow? What is there to uncover? What will it feel like to be even closer to my true self?
So January 1, 2020 came and I enthusiastically showed up for the first day of my very first New Years resolution.
The first six days were exciting. Throughout the practice Adriene reminded us to accept where we are and pay attention to everything. The way our body feels, what pops up in our heads, the sound of our breath. I made every practice a total body experience and in Leah style I turned it up a notch – just to get that extra burn. I told myself “I am strong. I am strong.” and I felt strong and I was getting stronger. I fantasized about being strong enough to one day do a handstand, or some of those cool looking bendy poses I’ve seen on Instagram. I was proud of myself because I felt I was well on my way. When it came time for day 7, I was especially proud because if I got to day 7, this would be the first time in a long time I was active for 7 consecutive days.
When I saw the title of the Day 7 video. I greeted it with a disgusted eye roll.
Stretch? That sounds weak. I hate stretching. This day is such a waste of time.
I found the words “relax” and “heal what ails” to be particularly annoying. Nonetheless, I had to show up to keep my streak going. In the daily email Adriene mentioned to “Stretch your mind’s eye, your imagination, and your awareness a little further beyond the physical body today” and I kept it in the back of my head to be open minded.
I don’t know why I reacted so bitterly to Day 7 so suddenly. After all, I came to yoga to heal my pain. Somewhere in the fog of my expectations I forgot that part. I dreaded the practice the moment I hit play.
This “weak” stretch practice turned out to be the hardest one for me – physically and mentally. I couldn’t stay focused. I was yelling at myself to stay focused and yelling at myself some more when the poses were challenging. My body was being stretched, no doubt about it. It felt physically exhausting to reach, open, breathe, and stretch. The practice felt like an eternity and all I could think about the whole time was how much longer I was going to have to torture myself through this. I don’t know how, but I was noticing the negative thoughts that came into my head.
As the practice wound down, I realized how difficult it is for me to be kind to myself. I was fine pushing, shaking, and sweating. I like the hard stuff; I’m addicted to an unrelenting grind. The first six days were tough but I was cheering myself to push through and stick with it, and then congratulating myself for the win. But when it was time to do what I thought was easy, gentle work, I thought it a waste of my time. I was frustrated and angry that I couldn’t stay focused, and then cursed myself for not being able to take it easy. When I finally did take it easy, I was bored and angry again, assuming easy was not serving me.
Then I thought about how I treat myself off the mat. I was stunned to realize that it is the same.
Omg I’m not nice to myself.
And everyone could probably say the same about themselves. I’ve always known this about myself, but there was something different about coming face to face with it. Realizing how you speak so negatively to yourself with conviction. It truly breaks your heart everyday, even though you are used to it. Remembering all the times you never felt good enough. All the times you felt alone and misunderstood. All the times you felt lost. And wondering how many of those times came from the mean voices in your head. It was enlightening to come to terms with the fact that self love is not just a feel good mantra, it’s a basic human need and without it we are truly unconnected with ourselves.
I felt sad after Day 7. It was real sadness. The kind of sadness I would feel if that mean girl in my head was my friend – always tearing me down and making me feel like garbage any time she got the chance. And always convincing me that the only way I’m ever good enough is if it hurts, because that’s the only thing I deserve. That sadness was a mirror, revealing the effects of my negative self-talk to me (rather than the numbing effect it had on me in the past). I was able to see it in front of me for the first time, and feel in my heart what it does to me every day. I thought maybe I’m tearing down a wall, becoming more alive, and the thought of it warmed me so I accepted the sadness with gratitude.
After the practice I wanted to try a different approach to my yoga journey – a refreshed New Years resolution. I think I might try to use yoga to practice loving myself. The way I love my friends and family. The way I love my husband. The way I love my son. With complete acceptance for where I am, and kindness for everything else.