“The enemy is a very good teacher”- the dalai lama 

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a kick ass super motivated practice must be asking for a “this is all pointless/ i’m crippled/I’m a total loser/my down dog is ugly/I should just roll over and die in savasana” kind of day.

In fact, the minute someone asks me, “how do you stay motivated?” as I’m sitting post-practice pretty in the clouds smugly thinking I’m always motivated, the very next day I will get hit so hard with a case of the “I-can’t-move-my-arms- is-it-a -moon-day-yet” sloggity slogs.

Let me explain: the slogs are bit like the underwear gnomes from South Park. Instead of underpants, they steal motivation mojo. A case of the slogs is like a case of the Monday’s but worse, because it can hit any day of the week.

Another words for the slogs is “resistance” – from Steven Pressfield’s book, “The War of Art”, which I highly recommend! 

Today I felt unmotivated (and slogged). And yet, without pushing, I did my entire practice. I almost couldn’t believe it as I made my way into the final posture. How did I motivate?

Step 1: let your commitment motivate you. Because I am committed, I simply start and see something through. After all, sucky sun salutes are sun salutes too. I’m motivated to do a daily practice whatever it means for the day. And the worst thing isn’t a sucky practice but the feeling that I’ve run away from the thing I love.

Step 2: Start primary series and get through all the standing postures. When my prana is slow to come online, more standing postures help; motivation grows with each move on my feet. Maybe the standing poses clear slogs. Sometimes I’ll do the first seated posture or two as well. Something about primary gets me into the groove.

Step 3- Just make shapes. One day in the DC mysore room, Peg Mulqueen walked in and said, “just make shapes.” On these slog-infested days days it’s both important to keep my intensity up so I don’t completely fade, as well as to let go of idyllic visions and just make the shapes. I let it go if my transitions clunk and sputter. If I land, bind and breathe– great. If I’m not getting the highest marks from the judges in my head, f–k it! I’m just here to make shapes. And if I do that, if I show up and breathe and do that, I have done what I came to do. I have slayed the slogs with shapes. 

Step 4- Think Kino. Or rather, she marches into my subconscious on her hands. Not really– But I do recall her saying that she does her third series practice even when she doesn’t want to, even when she’s tired. Thinking of Kino I become clear: In this moment, there’s nothing wrong with me aside from the fact that I’m a little sore and sloggy. It’s nothing fatal or dangerous physically. Mentally, however, I’m dealing with resistance because I don’t feel like a perfectly primed flexible noodle. And because I don’t feel perfect, I don’t think my practice will be pretty and ninja-y and then– I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to try.

“The key with Third Series is to do the practice when you feel good, when you feel just ok and also when you feel bad. This Advanced practice is a daily practice and you take whatever body you have, whether it is sore, tired, tight, open or strong, into the practice and just do it without adding anything special. It is a lesson gained not in the first years of sustaining this practice, but after five or ten years of consistent Third Series practice. Only then can the ego be burned through enough to realize that it is just your practice. ~Kino MacGregor

Remember the Bhagavad Gita? You have the rights to your labor but not to the fruits of that labor. Don’t let the fruit you seek kill your motivation and inhibit you from taking any steps on your mat at all. 
So I start second series. Damn you kino. I mean thanks.

It’s worth saying how easy it is to fail because you don’t try; and you don’t try because you feel far from perfect. And that’s the biggest failure of all, because it isn’t a failure at all–

you never gave yourself the chance.

This practice doesn’t let you say “pass.” Well then, don’t pass on yourself. 

Step 5- Let your halfway mark pull you along. There’s a point in practice I consider the halfway mark (thanks to an Insta friend), and with second series that’s yogi nidrasana. Once I’m that far I know i can finish the series– It’s like a life preserver, that pose (only a weirdo would call a pose involving both feet behind the head comforting so call me a weirdo). Maybe you’re somewhere else in practice. Look at your total time on the mat for the pose at the halfway mark. Consider it your life raft.

Step 6: Staying with it helps you stay with it. The more I stay with it the more I stay with it. At a certain point practice turns around. It gathers steam, it slays slogs and then I’m surfing. But, and this is a big but- it might be really sucky and ugly for a good while before you get there.

I keep an open mind and I have faith — because these days often come with breakthroughs and surprises. On this sloggy day, I got somewhere new in my final pose.

And to think that feeling of wanting so much to feel what I like to feel– that prana fireworks-practice-feeling– is what almost prevented me from starting. It’s only working with the slog that I ever get there.

So being unmotivated becomes this weird reminder that itself motivates me. Or, as the Dalai Lama put it:

“The enemy is a great teacher”