Progress

If you ask me who I am athletically, I would tell you that I am a runner. Running has always come naturally to me. There seems to be a rhythm that works through me that exists only to push my legs forward ever faster. That doesn’t mean that my body has always cooperated. I’ve been knocked off the treadmill by a bone spur, tendonitis, and most recently, a bum hip, which my ex-running dad admits I got from him.

When my husband and I began looking honestly at where we were going, I started going to yoga. I try to be a new-age person, because I like the music and the incense, but honestly, I’m one of those high-strung, get out of my way and let me get my job done kind of people. But I broke down and forced myself to struggle through an hour every Sunday morning of standing mountain and child’s poses in an effort to get some balance in my out-of-control life. Alright, my mind never shut off (I try, okay…but despite the promptings of my yoga teacher, it chatters incessantly), but my hips loosened up, and I found myself back on the treadmill. Yoga was a tough experience for me. My muscles will pound out three miles, easily, but put them in warrior II, and they shake like one of those really scary Jell-O-molds with the floating fruit. I was the student that was constantly corrected. My arms were always flung too far back, my shoulders hunched up to my ears, and years of cursing my height have given me a slight slouch that my yogini was vigilant about fixing.

When my husband and I left each other and our marriage, I went to yoga one more time. I suffered through the stretches, feeling awkward and lumpy, and then flung myself to corpse pose for the final meditation only to find tears rolling in constant motion toward my ears. I left yoga, and didn’t return.

While I worked through my new existence, I ran again. Occasionally, my body creaked and groaned and reminded me that it was the stretching in yoga that had put me back in my Nikes, but I ignored it, and pushed on toward the endorphin rush that made the evening routine tolerable. Whatever my mind wanted to say to me in the quiet of the yoga classroom, I didn’t want to hear.

Besides, Sunday mornings were my daughter’s time with her dad. Dropping her off at his apartment, seeing the new life that he had built inside its tiny walls, and kissing her goodbye were chewing on glass experiences for me. I’d bumble out to my car feeling as if the world had stepped on me and was trying to scrape me off its shoe. I started going straight to the gym to run. And run. And run.

Last week, I saw my yoga teacher as I was leaving. I ducked my head, feeling like a kid caught ditching school, but a part of me thought back to the down dogs and the up dogs, and her gentle promptings to listen to your body and be kind to it.

My life has been easier lately. About a month ago, I stopped feeling like shit on Sunday mornings, and when I told my ex-husband and daughter to have a wonderful time, I meant it.
So today, I did it. I packed my gym bag, as usual, but grabbed my second-hand yoga mat as well. Today, I hit five miles on the treadmill. I changed my clothes and then went to yoga. Some of it was a suffering through experience, my legs shook, and yes, my yoga teacher corrected me again, twice. As I wheeled my arms down into plank, I admitted that whatever talent I have for running, it will never transfer over to yoga. But there is no substitute for that completely relaxed feeling at the end that my body, if not my mind, yields to as I lay on my mat in semi-darkness.

So yes, I’m a runner. But I’m also a student of yoga. I’m the one in the back, looking a bit out of place, all bony elbows and big booty, losing my balance and hitting the yoga mat with lacking grace. And that, my friends, is progress.