Ooooph, I’m having a hard time these days with my morning yoga practice.  Each morning I wake up and I just don’t want to do it…. there’s a heavy weight of resistance sitting on my head as I sleepily go to the loo and brush my teeth.  My body feels cumbrous and dull, my mind also, and it just feels too hard and impossible to get on my mat and do my practice.

It feels a little bit like I’ve come round full circle to those first couple weeks in the mountains of Dharamshala last May, when I began this daily morning routine and continuously battled my sweet Lazy Lolly persona, who strongly resisted this daily effort.  It was difficult to maintain the new routine, to get on my mat each morning, to commence my practice.  Back then, in the early stages of establishing daily morning yoga, the only way to get on that mat was to allow myself to do the bare minimum, literally just five minutes of yoga and finish up after that if need be.  I rarely did as little as five minutes.  Those first few weeks it was usually fifteen to twenty minutes, depending on my energy and stamina and mood on each particular day…

Over time it has naturally and organically extended as my muscles and breathing developed through the consistent regular practice.  Little and often was key; is still key.  Which is why I’m still practicing but boy has it gotten hard again.

For a while there, perhaps the third and fourth months of this new routine, it was rarely so difficult or daunting as it has become now.  Getting up and getting started was ok, breathing my way through the sun salutations and moving through the standing poses was challenging, but there was a lightness in my body and an ease to the practice.  These days, those first 10 minutes of Surya Namaskars feel like the first 10 minutes of a 2 hour marathon.

My body feels stiff, tired, sluggish.  My mind is resisting all the way as each movement feels like I’m lifting a massive tank and not my 50 kg human frame.  Once through the sun salutations and on to the standing poses gradually things ease up a little.  Moving from one pose to the next has a calming effect and the flow feels gently expansive and refreshing, like the cool trickle of a little stream.

By the time I get to Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana (the most challenging of all the standing poses) I can usually get through it without too much resistance because I know the main bulk of the ‘work’ has been done.  That said, some days the effort to keep my balance and stay strong in this pose literally leaves me feeling close to tears.

 “It’s too hard” my mind complains .  “I don’t like all this effort, I don’t like that my muscles are kinda burning, I don’t like that to keep the breath long and even means I have to stay in this pose longer…. I DON’T LIKE THIS!!!!”

Ooooooph…. apparently, I don’t like hard work, right?  My body isn’t hurting, there’s no damaging pain happening here.  Sure the muscles are being pushed a little, reaching close to their limit, as is my lung capacity when trying to keep the breath slow and steady in a challenging posture.  But that’s nothing more than a little mental and physical effort.  Nothing to warrant such a strong, adverse reaction.  So, what’s going on here?

I guess I’m meeting a part of me that feels really overwhelmed by anything difficult in life, and she’s showing up a lot these days in my yoga practice.  They say that getting on your mat every day is like standing in front of a mirror –  you meet and get to know yourself in every practice.  I think this is especially true in Mysore-style Ashtanga because each morning it’s the same sequence, the same poses, whether you feel like doing them or not.  You can’t avoid the ones you don’t like or play around and experiment (also a valuable activity, but not the point of this type of practice).

You have to meet your boredom or your annoyance or your reluctance/resistance to the practice and simply do it anyway.  And it’s hard.  Each morning this week I’ve considered skipping my practice (sure a day off would be no harm) or maybe doing it later in the day (yeah, I could do an evening practice today instead!) but a part of me knew this wasn’t right and I needed to just get on the mat and do it.  And each day, once I lay down in Savasana, tired but relaxed and happy, I knew it was the right decision.

No practice is ever the same and as I’m learning, some days it can be hard just to get through the routine and make it to the end.  Some days you just have to take it one breath at a time and not focus on going for the ultimate stretch or adding extra breaths to build strength.  Because simply being there is developing strength enough of a different kind – strength of the mind to choose what’s good for you over what you think you want; to choose the healthy salad over the tempting pizza, to get up early instead of sleeping in late, to write that book and not stare at the tv…. these choices can all present a real challenge to our automatic preference of ‘instant gratification’, i.e. doing the thing that feels good right away, instead of taking the harder route of doing something that you don’t want to do but that you know will make you feel better afterwards.

It’s all about balance.  Of course there are times when you should relax and enjoy the moment, enjoy that delicious, cheesy pizza, allow yourself the luxury of sleeping in or sitting down to a really good movie when you are genuinely tired and need a rest.  But in the west, we swing that way too often.  We need a large helping of some healthy discipline.  This is what I’m learning.  A day off is always so much sweeter when you’ve been working hard.  Chocolate tastes so much better when it’s an occasional treat.  And my days off yoga are a reward because I’ve been strong and wise and made the effort to get on my mat all the rest of the week.

So, the irony of all this?  Each time Saturday comes around and I get up and mosey on with my day – without my yoga – you know what happens?  I miss it!  I feel like I wish I could have done it that morning too, even though I went to bed the previous night a little excited to not have to do it next morning!  Which is one of the reasons I keep getting myself onto my mat.  Because despite the challenges it keeps throwing at me, I really, really do love yoga and can count it as one of the many blessings in my life!

Om shanti.  Peace and blessings,

Ellie