Some days I wake up thinking “it’s a moon day somewhere, right?” Everything feels heavy, sluggish and why bother-ish, my internal weather cloudy with more than a chance of vegan meatballs. Or perhaps I’m dripping with negative self-talk or breaking out into a serious case of the blah blah blahs. It’s time to practice but third series–no, any series — seems unlikely.
This was me yesterday. Really. I’m the home practice rah-rah girl and for good reason– I love my home practice like a fat kid loves caked I’ve been at it for more than five years. But every now and then I have a day or a week that just feels a bit harder, when I lose that loving feeling. This has happened a teensy bit more this summer while I’ve been dealing with some stresses (if you’d like to know more about that, check out my posts at IVForreal.com). Still, when able to practice I have done so with remarkable (yes, I’m going to give myself that lovely word, remarkable!) consistency:
Last week– BOOM! 6 days, all as prescribed (to wit: one day second, four days second plus third, one day primary).
This week. Sunday- Bam!
Monday: Ba—uh oh. my internal car won’t start.
So what do I do when I don’t feel like I have it in me?
1. Prepare to start– As if you are actually going to start!
If you practice ashtanga you know that the practice does not begin or even end when you step on and off your mat. Many of us know that there is the night before, sleep habits, eating and not eating, coffee and arrangements of crystals and other lifestyle choices and rituals that go into a regular daily practice.
My morning practice preparations go something like this: make and consume coffee, set up my practice space (including heater, mat and towel), quick shower, attend to the doggies and finally, Instastory my practice space while some hideously popular song plays in the background and I try to look cooler than I actually am. (What can I say, I’m almost superstitious about it now.)
Whatever your pre-practice ritual, I suggest sticking to it even and perhaps especially when you wake up and it feels like it’s got to be a moon day somewhere. So do your coffee-shower-smudging?–thing. Anything could happen, so prepare to start practice like anything could.
2. Start. By the time I’ve done my pre-practice dance and arrive at the top of my mat I usually have some sense (dramatic story monologue) of how I feel — if it’s “low” I try not to let that story take hold. I don’t fight it, but I don’t etch it in stone either. Things then go one of a few ways:
(a) I start, practice takes me over — and it’s glorious. Or:
(b) I start. I move my limbs but they have bailed and taken a holiday –there is no prana (despite the coffee), the system is not booting up and nothing is online.
Offline, I go through the motions, trying not to write the story’s ending just yet. I’ll admit to an internal tension between allowing myself the flexibility to depart from what is prescribed versus sticking to what I’m committed to doing for that day (for example, all of second up to where I am in third). I don’t want to “push” myself but I don’t want to let myself off too easily. If I really don’t feel my pranic pathways come online I usually make it through the essential standing postures, and sometimes a little more before I call it. Or:
(c) I start. I try primary series.
(d) I start. I do all of my practice. It’s not glorious, but it’s for real.
Let me pause here. Starting is pretty much it. I should probably go back and delete the paragraph above. Because it doesn’t matter. I started. You started. If it ends up being a few surya namaskar, all of the standing postures, or you breathed in and out– you started, thus you did.
3. Finish. Finish something– a single sun salutation. The essential standing postures. The last three closing postures. Complete the circle, no matter how small of a circle it is for that day.
4. “Keep Going. Don’t Look Back.” (Harmony Slater) If it was a less than glorious practice, so what? It’s a lifelong deal, so one day isn’t but a drop in the bucket:
Harmony: Yes and I like that about the practice, that it’s daily. Just do your best and then try again tomorrow and then try again tomorrow. Some days it’s going to be really easy and other days it might be hard and that’s okay. It doesn’t have to be your best most radical practice every single day. It can just be whatever it is that day, and it doesn’t mean if you can’t do one posture one day that tomorrow you’re not going to be able to do it too. Tomorrow you might just be able to do it just fine. I think sometimes people get really caught up on this one practice or the form of the practice as opposed to just the overall…. the overall effect versus…yes, the 10 year effect versus the one day effect. ~Harmony Slater
As for me, yesterday I stopped after the essential standing postures and a touch of second. I got my depressed butt out of the house and did some fun movement with friends. Today I got on my mat and it was glorious. It’s a beautiful reminder that those sucky days are like placeholders for these glorious days that come after. So I try not to sweat it when practice sucks because that is when the magic happens– those days are part of the magic.
Hmm, perhaps we should say:
No practice is ever sucky.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I looked north, in its direction—the very thought of that bridge a beacon to me. I looked south, to where I’d been, to the wild land that had schooled and scorched me, and considered my options. There was only one, I knew. There was always only one.
To keep walking.
~ Cheryl Strayed, “Wild”