Peace.... Be still.

I used to love love love yoga.  I still do, I think, but find it hard to find any peaceful moments to myself to actually do a full session of yoga.  I got started doing yoga when I was in college, living in Utah.  I stumbled across a Power Yoga class by accident, stayed to participate, and fell in love with how challenging it was.  I was surprised by how difficult it was to hold the poses in the beginning.  I would be sweating just to hold a simple chair pose or a twist.  I had always considered myself to be "in shape" but I had found my new challenge.  What really sold me, though, was watching the elderly lady next to me master each pose with absolute ease.  She was strong, flexible, and absolutely still as she mastered her poses gracefully and effortlessly, as I fumbled clumsily and my muscles shook.  After class I spoke with her about yoga and she was absolutely glowing.  She looked young and vibrant.  I was surprised when she told me her age (I forget now, but 60 or 70-something).  She just looked so youthful and graceful and radiant.  And she was happy and peaceful.  I wanted THAT.  All of it.  She embodied everything that I wanted to acheive, so I set to work with my yoga.  I started to go quite often.  Then I also signed up for Power Yoga as part of my class schedule at school.  It didn't take long for me to find that it wasn't about strength and power and pushing through movements.  It was about finding the proper positioning and alignment and syncing it with the breath and finding the energy and power from within my very core.  When I found that place - that place of ease - I suddenly felt like I was floating through each pose.  I was working, sure, but without all the opposing force.  I had learned to find that meditative place within myself that allowed me to be in tune with every aspect of my movement and stability.  It was, quite simply, a beautiful thing.  My very favorite was the sivasana (dead man's pose) at the end.  After an hour or hour and a half of intense breathing and postures, you just lie there, still, peaceful, letting yourself just be.  Everything relaxes, even your mind, during the sivasana.  It's a very tranquil moment.

I used yoga during my pregnancy to prepare for labor and delivery.  I had not read anything about birthing breathing or hypnobirthing or anything of the sort.  But, I practiced yoga regularly and continued to sync my breath with my body.  When I went into labor, I used yoga breathing rather than any of the methods the nurses would throw at me to breathe through the contractions.  I was calm and peaceful and actually fell into a sort of trance at one point.  I felt like I had fallen asleep, just for a moment, during active labor!  This was before the epidural, when I was dilated to an 8.  It was incredible.  I probably could have had a natural birth that way - I felt like I was handling my first labor and delivery like a champ - it was one of the most peaceful experiences of my life.  But, I was just a little bit (okay, very much!) terrified of that time when the baby is actually supposed to, you know, come out!  I buckled and got the epidural before it was too late.  No regrets.  (By my third baby, I did have a natural delivery, but more out of circumstance than choice.  You can read that story somewhere below in September 2011.)

After my first baby was born, I continued to do yoga with him by my side or even in my arms.  He would lie down next to me as I mastered yoga poses, and when he learned to tummy crawl, he would crawl on over and participate in the poses.  I have some great photos of us doing yoga together that I need to find.  I even started to teach a free Mom & Baby yoga class a couple times a week at my church.  I didn't have a gym pass.  My exercise was taking walks with the baby and doing yoga.  I felt great!


Somewhere along the line, I lost it.  We moved, life got busier and crazier with an active toddler running the show, Jordan was gone a lot with medical rotations and military stuff, then we had another baby, moved again for Residency, had yet another baby, and life just started to spin faster and faster out of my control.  I finally joined a gym about a year ago, but quickly got sucked into various classes such as dance and spin and interval training.  I forgot about yoga.  I started to kind of hate yoga.  I pulled out one of my old yoga DVDs one night and was annoyed by how foreign it felt to me.  The strange breathing.  The funky poses.  I couldn't believe how much my mind and body had forgotten of something that I had once sworn by!  What had changed anyhow?  Why did I used to love this stuff?  I wanted to teach this?!  Had I really changed so much over the years?

I tried a yoga class last night at my gym, now that dance rehearsals are over for the summer break.  I tried really hard to like it.  The poses the instructor presented were really easy, actually.  But, I kept forgetting to breathe.  And I was too caught up in my thoughts.  And I just wasn't present.  I was somewhere else.  I was stressed.  I was mad.  I didn't like the solitude.  I wanted to move.  I wanted to run.  I couldn't relax during sivasana.  I didn't feel myself melting and relaxing, I felt myself tensing up and watching the clock.  By the time the instructor chimed her annoying little bells, I wanted to bolt out of there!  I sat up, uneasy, and went through the cheesy chanting and said my namastes to the class around me and quickly started to pack up my yoga mat.  I felt very uneasy.  The instructor approached me and inquired about my past experience.  I don't know why, but I just felt so agitated.  Not by her, just by being stuck in this quiet, dark, calm room.  I politely answered her questions and told her I used to do yoga a very long time ago and hoped to get into it again some day.  I walked out of there and felt like I needed to gasp for air.  Why was I feeling panic in there rather than relaxation?!  Why can't I just BE STILL?!

Today, as I contemplated that question, I realized it's the very thing I'm trying to work on outside of yoga.  Being present.  Relaxing and being okay with it.  A song entered my mind today, one that we sing in church:  Peace, Be still.  It is so hard for me to do that.  To feel peace.  To be still.  This seems to be a common theme for my posts in the past month, actually.  When I was looking for the lyrics to that church song, I came across this song, which touches the sailor in my soul.  I always joke with Jordan that I was meant to be a sailor.  I have a deep passion for boats, the sea, and predicting weather.  And I love a great drunken sailor song!  Here's the hymn I found.  It seems to be sung in a very southern Baptist style, but the words are very poetic and deserve some recognition for their beautiful meaning:

Master, the tempest is raging
The billows are tossing high
The sky is o'ershadowed with blackness
No shelter or help is nigh
Carest thou not that we perish?
How canst thou lie asleep
When each moment so madly is threatning
A grave in the angry deep?

The winds and the waves shall obey thy will
Peace, be still
Peace, be still
Peace, be still
Peace, be still
Whether the wrath of the storm-tossed sea
Or demons, or men, or whatever it be
No water can swallow the ship where lies
The Master of ocean and earth and sky
They all shall sweetly obey thy will
Peace, peace, be still

Okay, so back to the yoga topic.  The difference between THEN and NOW is simple:  it's the "discipline" aspect of yoga that I have lost.  When I was starting out yoga, I was a stressed-out, beyond-busy college student.  But, I used yoga as my time to step away from everything and meditate and focus on the task at hand and just breathe through the poses and JUST BE.  Now, I have lost that ability for the time being.  I am a stressed-out, beyond-busy mother of three, running a household almost entirely on my own while supporting a busy surgical resident husband.  I have a very difficult time letting go, stepping away from it all, breathing, meditating, disciplining my mind to focus and be present.  So, yeah, I really hate yoga right now because it is really hard for me.  But, I also recognize that I need it now more than ever.  I need to learn to let go, focus, and breathe.  I need to re-teach myself to be present.  I know I'll love it again if I could just do that.  And I recognize that it is so good for me all around because it teaches me to follow those same principles in my daily life - and who doesn't want to live in the present when life is just so good?!  I want to cherish every moment I have with my kids.  I want to live in the moment as we have all of these wonderful adventures together.  Lately I'm just so consumed with other things.  I want to love yoga again.  I want to learn to let go.  Let go of my current stress.  Let go of the past pain.  Let go of things that inhibit me and keep me from living life to the fullest.  I want to let go.  Breathe.  Just be.

I think I'll stick with Power Yoga and Ashtanga Yoga, though, because some of that other stuff is really funky.  I'm really not into the new-age imagery and chanting.  I participated in Sivinanda Yoga last night.  I feel so phony chanting the Ommmmm..... and then mumbling out whatever jibberish comes next.  I'm sure it has some beautiful meaning and significance, but it's just not me and I hate doing it.  I also don't like it when the instructor tries to impart wisdom and affirmations in an overly soothing voice during the sivasana.  I'm not looking for a guru.  I'm looking for a workout that allows me to train my body and mind simultaneously.  I can be my own guru.  If I need advice on finding the light or whatever they're talking about, I'll talk to someone I know and look up to, or read a book, read the scriptures.  I don't need some new age guru rattling off yoda-style bits of wisdom.  It's so annoying.  Right?  That's why I like the athletic styles of yoga (such as Power, Vinyasa, and Ashtanga)  mixed with the basic principles of the yoga discipline (breath, alignment, finding your center, finding your energy, focusing your mind, living in the present, appreciating your body, etc).  Anyhow, I'll stop ranting about Yoga.  I'm just journaling what is in my head because for years I thought I would become a yoga instructor.  Recently I have been exploring what it will take to open my own fitness studio where I can teach dance and aerobics and, yes, even yoga.  But I'm going through a sort of funky season of life where everything is just utter chaos.  Which makes me think maybe I need yoga now more than ever.  ????