My Week in Yoga: Making and Living With Mistakes

I don't always get it right when it comes to my yoga practice. Crikey, I broke a bone doing this malarkey wrong! But that was now over 2 years ago and I do like to think I have got significantly better at listening to and respecting my body since then.

This week reminded me that this is still a skill I have to actively develop, through practice AND through sensible decision making. Which means not putting myself in situations where I am set up for failure.

Which is of course precisely what I did this week. And of course I paid the price.

Not quite broken bone prices (THANK GOODNESS!), but still...

Monday:  

30 minute after-work self-practice, with the garden doors open. I was totally feeling standing postures today, as well as a few different hits of crow pose and some other fun bits and pieces.

Tuesday: 

AKA where it all went wrong!

Yoga dates are - were -one of my favourite ways to spend time with my friends... yoga + dinner/brunch etc. Tonight  I did the former... but the 75min class we signed up for (jivamukti) was substituted for a mandala vinyasa class. Which then turned out to be sequenced around “fire”, of course. So loads of twists and inversions and and and.

I was really proud of myself for modifying the whole shebang totally on the fly, but I couldn't turn down the millions of vinyasas. Which felt fine in my body at the time, though was definitely stressful to have to modify so much, to worry about what was coming next, and to be constantly reminded of what I can no longer do (hello EPK2 float to chinstand, and pincha in the middle of the room).

So I left the class telling myself that my instinct to not really go to classes anymore is the right thing for me. It's just too much of a gamble what might be going on, and while I can modify a lot, there is a point where I just can't say no. I’m so grateful that my self-practice is so much more developed than my ego management basically!

Wednesday: 

Felt fine waking up, but by evening (my planned and favourite practice time), my lower back was SORE. Oh dear...

So no yoga today.

Thursday: 

Two extra pillows in bed the previous night didn't help sadly... sore backs are NOT fun.

No yoga today.

Friday: 

A unicorn day at work: no external meetings. Which would normally mean time to get to a yoga class in my work gym, or a self-practice session. Instead, I blasted through as much work as I could, left a little early and fell asleep on the sofa for an hour. All before peeling myself off and out to a lovely dinner with friends.

My back was still present in my mind and clearly my body needed rest. So no yoga today.

Saturday:

And this is where is all caught up with me. If you want to read the full self-pitying Instagram post you can do so here, but in short, my big life/work/project to-do list, plus the sore back and general pregnancy hormone maelstrom meant I had a little melt-down. Well, it was more like a quiet, grumpy sulk - which my husband dealt with beautifully - but still. I was definitely feeling sorry for myself! Which meant another day not stepping on my mat.

Sunday:

Letting it all out is often the best thing isn't it? I felt much better after the previous days's meltdown and it showed in the 30min session on my mat. It was a pretty simple and balanced practice and watching it back I learned A LOT. Namely, exactly what had caused my back pain from earlier in the week. I had worried it was just general over-doing it. but no. It was my chaturangas!

You can see the post I did later on this here, but in short, I was letting my lower back sag to a really extreme degree in every one. So of course I hurt myself in short.  Lessons learned, and no more chaturangas for me until I am fully recovered and can work out how to modify, if at all...

• Self-Practice: 1hr
• Classes:  1hr 15min
• TOTAL: 2hrs 15min