Time is telling

I’ve been struggling to compose a blog post. It’s been three months; an entire season has passed without my pressing the publish button.

I don’t feel good about this, yet I also refuse to feel bad. I am being very honest with myself about what’s going on in my life, but it is harder to be open with the entire Internet. The courage I summoned last January when I started posting on a regular basis has not disappeared, but it does seem to be transforming, and lately is expressing itself more privately than public.

And so I haven’t written. I haven’t felt like talking to you about yoga, but I know I will want to again. There are still amazing things I want to tell you, and I more than ever believe in yoga’s capacity to help people heal and grow.

And though I don’t feel bad about not writing, I do feel bad about the things I have missed sharing these last few months.

In January I did not convey the proud thrill of discovering that my feedback to a draft of The Science of Yoga was helpful enough that the author included me in the book’s Acknowledgments. I also didn’t tell you about my yoga retreat to Mexico, how I was both excited and terrified to serve as an assistant with one of my most respected teachers. That trip could have easily become a handful of blog posts–and, oh, the pictures! But I didn’t show you, and I didn’t describe the triumph of facing my fears and helping a student into her first-ever headstand in the process. I didn’t even attempt to express the significance of the full-body catharsis I experienced on the final evening, didn’t explain how an overwhelming wave of spiritual reassurance flooded my awareness and allowed me unprecedented peace and acceptance. I kept all that to myself.

In February I never let you know that one morning when I was stepping off the bus, my ankle twisted in a pothole and just like that, I lost my ability to walk. Limping was my mode of transport for weeks, and most especially during the early days of the doctors’ visits and diagnoses (technically a torn ligament, basically a standard sprain), I could have certainly written a thing or two about patience, about not taking life–or mobility–for granted. But I didn’t. I once started a draft while laid up on the couch; that’s as far as the words went.

In March I neglected to mention that I registered for the Yoga Service Council Conference. I agonized over the decision, but I didn’t work through my doubts and hesitations in a blog post. I did conclude, however, that even though I am not actively teaching yoga right now, my continued passion for and interest in the yoga service sector warrants the financial and emotional investment the conference requires, and I am very much looking forward to exploring further growth opportunities. I expect I will tell you about what I discover.

On Monday I attended my first yoga class since my ankle injury. I’m still in physical therapy twice a week and hadn’t gotten the okay to get back on the mat, but my mental state was unacceptably cluttered and thus overrode my physical condition. Even though I have a whole host of tools other than asana at my disposal, hence my ability to go without for as long as I did, there comes a point when the body’s energy just needs to move! (And the next day I did get official clearance to proceed with caution.)

I thought maybe I would write about Monday night; I observed my experience with care just in case, noted the relief I felt to see welcoming and familiar faces at my home studio. I had been worried the class would be vigorous and that I would have to be extra vigilant with self-care, but when I arrived there was Chet Baker crooning through the speakers and the next hour was challenging, but gently so, much more nurturing than I’d anticipated. A friend was teaching, and he said something that stuck with me: “These little conversations of the body, shaking and quaking, are you, growing.” I was shaking; I grew.

But I didn’t write about that class, and now April is almost half over, and it’s been months since I’ve posted anything at all. For a week or so–ever since I noticed that my last post was in frickin’ January–I’ve been mentally prodding myself to get something up for the three-month mark. I’ve heard that 90 days is the amount of time it takes to form a new habit (A Yoga Journal commenter goes so far as to suggest that 90 days is the time it takes to renew all the blood cells in the body), yet I do not want to be in the habit of ignoring this blog.

And so as spring approaches, I emerge from my online hibernation and say hello. I am grateful to be posting, I am most definitely okay, and in case you didn’t know, you are too. As for what’s next? We’ll just have to wait and see.