Today my alarm clock slapped me in the face. I was in the midst of a delicious dream (probably sleeping in a lovely room) when I heard:

“Mommy! Get up, Come downstairs with me!”

My live, in-person 3-feet-and-growing alarm clock draws me out of my dream and downstairs where our two dogs demand feeding and airing out. My body pulls me to the coffee pot as I wonder if the needs of these three creatures can just wait a second while I take a sip, or ten.

It’s still dark. I can no longer remember what I was dreaming. The coffee is not hot enough. Nothing is anything enough. Reality hits: it’s Monday.

I crave some time, even five minutes, to wake up and just be with myself, my own rhythm, before everything else takes over. For a moment I am jealous of my friends who have the option to wake up early and head to the mysore room before anything else infiltrates their psyches. I’ve found that waking early at home just ensures that everyone else will be up early, too.

Today I’m fortunate (in many guilt-inducing ways)– one being that once the craziness of the morning subsides, everyone except for me and the dogs will exit the house, including my human alarm clock who heads to preschool.

Leaving me alone. Of course, I turn that into a problem too.

Every Sunday I get up early and head to the mysore room in DC or Arlington to practice with beloved teachers and yoga friends, fellow ashtanga freaks. Returning to my mat all alone on a gray misty Monday is a precipitous letdown. As I drop the kid off at school, I chat with another mom who is off to hit the running trail to put in some serious mileage. I imagine her running alone, 12 miles. Surely I can do a little yoga alone? I do it all the time, successfully. But Monday is different.

My shoulders, back and thighs hum with a lactic-acid hangover. Just surya A&B JM, then you can move on– you can go to the gym even. I take my own advice. Out comes sun A&B, a couple of standing asanas and the last few finishing postures, all as I’m thinking, “I’m going to wrap this up and then blow my endorphins sky high.”  This is something I began doing late this summer when I suffered from doubt and struggled with my ashtanga practice. On days where my practice failed to lift off, I gave myself permission to do whatever I needed to do to bring me back– that is, to another place of consciousness. This often means intervals on the bike once or twice a week (a max of twenty minutes), usually on, you guessed it, Monday. This is a wonderful development for me: I stopped trying to be a professional ashtangi and made myself at home with being an amateur (a lightening of perspective).

I let go of the need to be so pure, so six-days-a week about it, instead allowing myself to do 4-5 great days with two mixed days. I now do whatever physical movement I need to show up as my best on any given day.

Today I’m still conflicted. I feel myself slipping into a story that’s already written: On Mondays, Jean Marie does A&B then heads to the gym to do intervals. I don’t want to be a foregone conclusion. I text my husband wondering what I should do (because, sadly, I don’t even know).

“Dude just take it easy. Do your yoga then go for a walk or something.”

He has a point. It’s a little after 9:10am and my precious preschool hours are slipping away. It would be more efficient just to do my full yoga practice as given to me by David Garrigues, all 115 minutes of it. But can I just get back on the mat? I think back to Sunday’s practice with Ashtanga Arlington. My last posture is (attempted) karandavasana, or, forearm stand with legs in lotus and that’s only the beginning– there’s more that frankly you don’t even want to know. I keep falling out as I try to put my legs in lotus. Tova, the teacher, calls out to me: “Once you’re up there you have to just decide that you’re not coming down.”

It’s true: I get up and come down just as I am sticking my second leg into the lotus every single damn time. It’s become something of a bad habit, but not a necessary one. Falling out as the second foot approaches is like slipping into a story that is already written. I want to choose my own adventure. Off I go, attempting the lotus again; only this time, I don’t come down. The lotus reigns (and then I get assistance for the actual state of the asana you don’t even want to know about).

I transliterate Tova’s advice for karandavasana into how I go about my morning. I decide I’m not going to come down, or off, my mat just yet. I start with a few sun salutations to reconnect with the heat I’ve already started to lose and then I jump back in at extended side angle. I play an 11-minute segment of background mysore room noise complete with DG exclamations on repeat to keep me going. Before I know it, I am on the floor, jumping back between seated postures. Sweat is dripping. It’s not my most rockstar practice, but it wouldn’t be a daily, life-long practice if it always was.

I finish victorious for rewriting my case of the Mondays, but something nags. I feel a shift in psyche wanting to happen. The asanas are just a piece of the story, always. There are many places in my life where I am repeatedly slipping into a story that is already written, where I am poised with one leg in lotus only to fall every time the second leg comes close. I think of all the drafts I’ve written and never finished: about the time I dropped my husband rock climbing, or about my struggle to see my body as something other than alien and deformed– in other words, truths I’m afraid to place into indelible electronic words. I think of all the times I almost, almost, avoid slipping down the slippery slope of rage. Can I just decide to practice doing all of this differently? With practice, can I be as different as this Monday?

That’s a story I’ll have to write.