Every yoga practice should include something that wakes you up. Something that makes you fully conscious. Something that you cannot sleep walk through. Something that makes you completely uncomfortable. Maybe even flat out scared. ~ Shanna small
“Finding comfort should be a struggle” ~ Peg Mulqueen
“…. the resistance to lizard brain is a compass. If it tells me that something is uncomfortable, if it tells me that something is scary then that is exactly what I’m going to do. I look for it as a clue that I’m on the right track….You know you have this built–in thing that shows you what the world is afraid of. And if you do that you’re probably going to do OK.” ~ Seth Godin
I learned something new in the mysore room today.
It wasn’t a new pose or assist, but this: If I want to progress, I’m going to have to get really uncomfortable.
This may sound odd if you follow me because I’m usually standing up with one leg behind my head, jumping around on my mat, carting my body weight around on my hands whilst my legs are folded into a pretzel, bumbling through several incredibly messy FAILS of third series posture attempts. But it’s all:
Cozy, comfy, cushy-gushy.
I got the routine the way I like it: coffee and writing exercises while my heater and humidifer bring my practice space to warmth. I get the clothes, take a two minute shower, check out new music, insta my pre-practice bed-head hair and BOOM. It’s on–
just the way I like it…
Right down to music–Lizzo if i feel like it? Extra tries here, fewer tries there or no tries over there, practice faster or slower, breath or no breath (failing as I like it), dristi or staring at toenails, whatever I like. Hold your yoga police blotter notes because I’m fairly conservative in terms of doing the practice as it has been taught to me, but as T.I. sang, at home–
“You can do whatever you like”
Hence the heeby jeebie chitta vritti anxieties when I leave home for my local mysore room: 5:45 alarm, 30-minute drive, mental gymnastics about whether my practice will look as good on that day or at that hour, self-conscious paranoid self-sabotage about whether my belly looks bloated and where is my favorite shirt and what is the point of going if I am just going to suck and what if I die on the drive and so on.
I am very uncomfortable.
It does not help that in this mysore room almost nothing is how I like it. Meaning? There are few distractions: no music. no time to stare into space or at my toes. No unctious heat, less sweat. I am on my own here, with only my breath– and this is big– my community and teacher to support me.
Ruh-roh.
I posted on Insta about the fears and insecurities sabataging some of my trips to SLC for mysore, trips I used to take at least once a week, before multiple surgeries, including a tragic surgery almost a year ago, scars on my body, a little less tightness to my abs, surgeries that took me through this same canyon. In my convalescence, both phsyical and mental, I have made my home space a bliss station.
Is it worth it to travel to this mysore room, spend money on class, leaving my cushy, warm free practice space if my mind is just going to function like a chitta vritti pinata just exploded? What kind of practice is that? What’s the point?
The chitta vritti pinata confetti begins to settle and I land karandavasana, but without crash. Progress. Practice, breath, my nearby shala friends and teacher smooth these mental tsunami waves down into a calm drift. Moving into third series I feel like I belong, most of all– to myself. I forget performance anxiety about my first arm balance. My best attempts arrive on my mat like presents, my next few arm balances better than usual. Sammy, the teacher, reminds me of dristi (oh yeah…that), answers some questions and I remember that I not only need help–
I want it. Maybe that’s uncomfortable to admit.
Is it better to stay home alone in my complacent comfortable heated space? For me, the answer revealed itself in how I felt the rest of the day: renewed, ready. creative. And my body? Worked.
I got uncomfortable in my practice today and this gave me more comfort with the uncomfortable spots. Then I remember: in Mysore, with Sharath, I was uncomfortable every single day. I never new which spot I’d be in, how long I’d be waiting for it, if I’d ever get beyond primary, who would be backbending me and what the hell is that bug it looks like a mouse with wings.
So I’ll ask: even if you practice intensely, even if you practice Ashtanga or in 110 degree hot yoga…. are you letting yourself get too comfortable?
Challenging my discomfort head-on is the real final posture, the challenge to meet myself where I am now, so I can meet myself
where I go next.
“Because we don’t get better by being better. We can’t find balance by being in balance. We NEED those voices to show up in our lives if for nothing else than as a sign we’re not stuck in hiding. To grow, we simply MUST be willing to move into places, risky and bold, and stir those beastly (and faulty) beliefs.” ~ Peg Mulqueen