Stick with your breath
And just come back when you lose it
Stick With Your Breath
[In yoga], you can do all these really lovely, beautiful, impressive things, but if you’re not breathing, not staying with yourself, not being honest about what’s really going on inside of your heart, it’s more like a frantic flinging.
I recently re-read Ally Fallon’s memoir Indestructible for the fourth or fifth time1 and I’ve been thinking about this quote this week every time I move. In yoga class, on my ten mile walk, on my run this morning.
It’s easy enough to apply to exercise (although much harder to execute), but what about work? What about parenting and partnering and going through grief and building your life? I know there have been so many days at the office or at home where I was just trying to make it from one pose to another but forgot to breathe. Forgot to look around and also look inside.
There’s the flip side, also. When you move so fast, when you are in such a groove that even if you are breathing, even if you’re in flow state, sometimes things go out of control. But I don’t know that it’s always a bad thing.
While I was doing all this thinking about being present during my run today, I tripped on a root. In an instant I was laid out Superman-style in the dirt, falling heavy on my hands and my elbows and my knees. I lay there a moment looking at the ground from this new perspective, then slowly sat up, got up, and started walking, inspecting my new scrapes.
I was able to get back to running in just a couple minutes (and would recommend the adrenaline rush for the last mile of a workout). But the fall itself was a rush. It was out of control — but the kind that made me feel more alive and grateful and ready to go again.
Today I:
Ran 3 miles at a local park
Showered and made a grocery list
Went shopping (Trader Joe’s, Food Lion, and Ace Hardware)
Ate lunch
Repotted some tomato plants we got this weekend and a jade plant that has been crying for better-draining soil
Wrote my pages
After writing this post, I will fold the laundry and go get the kiddo
Today I felt:
Well, my elbow is sore but in a good way. Today I have noticed just how much time everything takes. I commented last Friday that it seemed a lot that my 75 minute yoga class took 3 hours including driving, but in high school this was nothing: I’d stay after school, which got out at 3:45, starting practice at 4:15 or so, and not leaving to go home until 5:30 or 6. And that’s not including the sometimes weekly track meets that went until 8 or 9. Exercise takes time.
And doing life takes time. Today I ran, did the grocery shopping, the laundry, and only a bit of light tidying, plus the tomato plants and that has taken up a whole day, even without the toddler “helping.” Honestly it’s sometimes a wonder that a household with two working parents gets anything done, but we’ve made it for two and a half years and plenty of families have for their whole lives and I imagine we will make it for many more years to come.2
Tomorrow I want to:
I’m planning to return to my (unheated) yoga class. I might find an errand to run but then tomorrow afternoon I want to get back at the Friendship Database!
One more note - yesterday I did finish my tiny quilt! It took me ninety minutes to bind it off rather than the hour I was hoping but it is done and will no longer be sitting in a sad heap under my bed. The stitching on the topside of the binding is the best I have ever done but the bottom still leaves a lot to be desired. I will have to give myself more time - or practice on smaller pieces - for the scrap quilt.
Until tomorrow,
I read it for the first time in 2019 while I was feeling really, really stuck in my first marriage and it resonated so strongly with me I immediately re-read it the very next day. It resonates less strongly now but it’s still a book I read when I’m feeling dull or in a transition where I want to remind myself of the fierceness with which I want to inhabit life
But no, Mr. Musk, a $5,000 “bonus” will not be adequate to add children to this household. Knock it off.