It’s Friday. The day after mysore practice in the room with teachers, people, no where to freaking hide. You managed to perform like a ninja…. kind of…..ish (or so you hope): you stood on your forearms, bent over backwards and such, just like you would’ve at home. But the next day, I mean the next morning, i got to say the next day….

Today. “Just” Primary day…

you wake up STIFF as fuck. like someone threw rocks at your everything/you aged fifty years/someone poured cement into your psoas.

You step onto your mat. It’s just primary, it’s just an hour and fifteen minutes, it’s just sixty…five-million chatturangas, it’s just this practice you could do in your sleep right it’s just–

OH MY GOD DID PARASITES INVADE MY HAMSTRINGS AND STAGE A COUP AND NOW THEY DON’T EVEN FEEL LIKE THEY”LL LET ME DO A BASIC SUN SALUTATION

Yes. That. That you got worked, you got uncomfortable yesterday feeling. Then the mind starts to make up stories:

maybe you should bag it

take the day off

do something else

macrame?

until you get hip to your mind’s game and….

you remember.

You were in Mysore for a month and you did this practice, primary series, every damn day. You went. Everyday. tired. sore. strong. sleepy. sore. worried. crick in your neck. belly upset. you went. you went. you went. and you saw you could do, do do. Sure– sometimes it wasn’t the most gushy practice but every damn day that practice got done.

and you came home–

Better. Even at third series.

Perhaps because you learned you could just….do.

So, my dear, this is what you came for. Friday primary, the thing that hooked you in the beginning– the breath, the challenge, the marichyasana D. Your feeling sore and stiff is just an offering to the yoga mat practice gods today. It doesn’t mean that you don’t do:

It is, after all, evidence that you do…do….

you practice. it’s temporary– the hamstring invaders, the mental hunger games. They depart to vandalize someone else’s legs and brain, the last of the evidence that you do…..

do.

you practice.

so.

get to it.