My Week in Yoga: The Missing Month

The missing month… in my blog posts, and in my yoga practice. 

November and early December were patchy, as I documented here. That crazy time of year work and entertaining wise, along with customary feeling under the weather as winter set in, and generally running out of steam after a long year.

But I had the second half of December and early January all penciled in to get back to it all properly. Lots of classes, lots of self-practice, plus lots of sleep and time with friends and family. Well, that was the plan anyway. But alas, it was not meant to be.

Instead I got sick. Again, and again, and again. Nothing hugely dramatic, in fact nothing dramatic at all (if I stop being dramatic for a second!). But it left very little time or energy for anything apart from laying around on the sofa feeling sorry for myself.

So here’s the truth: I managed two classes in a whole month.

Yep, two.

There are times not too long ago where I would have done that in a day. So this feels MASSIVELY out of the norm for me. 

While on the self-practice front, well, lets be even more honest. I can’t really remember! Ha! Turns out if you don’t write these things down, you forget them preeettty quickly.

I had a few good 1 hour sessions while I was still at work and things quietened down before Christmas, as well as a couple of nice long slow Sunday sessions of pottering through gentle flows and some inversions (natch!). But there were lots of days I didn’t get on my mat (or out of bed) at all. Or where all I did was a couple of childs poses and down dogs. So yeah, I’m guessing with my very wide range below. 

At this point I figure I should tidy this all up in a neat bow: how grateful I am for the health I do have, and the practice that is either still there or will one day return, how I was reminded that every flow doesn’t have to be full of chaturangas and sweat to ‘count’. All of which is absolutely true.

But it doesn’t paint the whole picture.

Because it sucks not being able to do what you want to do. Being ill is horrible, even when it’s not serious. 

As I head into the fourth year of my yoga practice, I am more sanguine about whether I can hit the pose or do the sequence. In fact, this is the first January since I started where I haven’t set myself a pose based goal or resolution to meet. A pose doesn’t matter to me in the same way it did.

But gosh my practice still does.

I don’t care so much what it looks like, but I want to do it. I want to do MY practice. Which is more often than not full of sun salutations and chaturangas. I know there will be a day where that is no longer true. But I’m 31. And today is not that day. Crikey, I hope that day is 20, 30, 40 years away! A girl can dream (and work, and practice) right?!

• Self-Practice: 5-10 hours?! 
• Classes: 2hrs 30min
• TOTAL (for the past month!): 7-12hrs