I used to do a lot of yoga. Hot yoga, especially. Loved it. My body craved it.
Then my body went ahead and birthed a coupl'a humans in the span of less than 2 years, and suddenly I wasn't so sure what my body needed any more. In fact, my body didn't really factor into the equation at all, and it wasn't until quite recently that this new, post-child-bearing version of me was starting to crave yoga again.
It had been 6 years since I moved my body in a way that wasn't primarily to nurture or comfort or chase down a child. I was a little more hesitant this time around, a little more in my head, and certainly a lot more hyperfixate-y in general. There are so many new things I cannot control now, extra feelings I could do without, new expectations of my body, and previously unimaginable levels of anxiety unlocked.
Anxiety about anxiety. Anxiety stuffed with a gooey anxiety filling that is then wrapped in an additional layer of light, flaky anxiety and drizzled with a concentrated anxiety reduction.
Not to be dramatic.
So when I eventually did find my way back to yoga, after more than 6 years of not yoga, things went pretty much as expected. I wasn't as flexible as I used to be. And I was wayyyy more aware of my inner thought process. Surely if i could just get out of my head and back into my body, things would fall back into place! Surely yoga would be the perfect solution!
And then the instructor told us to pick an intention and, Reader, I PANICKED.
That feels a little too foreign, a little too cerebral for me right now.
I'm basically kinda feral. How do I select, out of the sheer infinity of potential intentions, just one?
To my utter dismay, the vast majority of instructors were very intent on intention-setting, and also weirdly particular about it all.
Time to select your intention.
Make sure your intention anchors your practice.
Keep coming back to your intention.
Check in with your intention.
Oh and also your intention should really be just like, one word.
ONE WORD?
You want me to condense my brain lava into just one word? One word to rule them all?
Lady, I contain multitudes.
I cannot, I WILL NOT, be reduced to like, one third of an inspirational throw pillow.
Plus, what if I pick the wrong intention?
What if i want to switch intentions part way through?
Also how many times am I allowed to switch intentions?
This new hyperfixation felt like the exact antithesis of what I had set out to accomplish in the first place, which was... I don't really know? What am I even doing here?
My stress about landing on the exact perfect intention quickly morphed into anxiety on crack, but now with the addition of focusing super hard on the way I am moving and stretching my body, while also feeling guilty for ditching my children to be here, but also maybe my core is starting to feel stronger but it probably doesn't even matter because what was my fucking intention again??
How in the live laugh love am I supposed to force myself to have a meaningful experience under these conditions??
Then, one evening, the conditions kinda changed.
Near the end of practice, a song came on that I hadn't heard or even thought of in more than 15 years, when I had found myself in India -- a song in Sanskrit, based on the mantra ong namo guru dev namo - which, loosely translated, means something along the lines of trusting the universe, trusting yourself, for you are your own teacher.
"You showed up for yourself," said the instructor, the song playing softly in the background, uncovering something that had unknowingly already imprinted itself on my soul, years, lifetimes, continents ago. "The simple act of showing up means you did the thing."
And for some reason, even though I've probably seen this exact messaging on a thousand mugs, this one time, it resonated with me. It crossed the mind/body barrier. I felt it and knew it in my soul.
I didn't even roll my eyes because tears were too busy rolling down the sides of my face, forming two salty pools on my mat.
I couldn't articulate it or intellectualize it or even explain it because, as it turns out, this kind of thing defies intellectualization. You cannot force meaning. It's either there, or it isn't.
And because I was there, on that particular evening, I came to realize that intentions are intensely overrated. Maybe not for everyone. But for me.
I just needed to know that consistently showing up for myself counts for something, counts for everything, really.
It's how I find my way back to myself.
With or without a yoga mat.
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