Balasana.
Sometime during that first (and only) semester of law school, I came to my mat for the very first time. I had joined HealthWorks on a tip from a fellow student. The exclusive women-only gym with Aveda products in the showers had ridiculously affordable student memberships if you signed up for the single-location option. And even though I was broker than I had been in undergrad, I went for it. Especially once I realized that it was only a 10 minute walk from campus.
I’m sure I didn’t really belong there. This was a gym for women who had their shit together. They’d do their before work or lunchtime workouts and then change into suits and heels that screamed “I mean business.” And I was just a lost and stressed out law student fumbling my way through.
I don’t know what compelled me to give a yoga class a try. I remember feeling even more out of place than usual. But the instructor slowed down her pace, offered a million modifications, and taught me the most important thing I would need to know: balasana, child’s pose, was always available to me when things got too intense.
Those classes (and a long sit in the eucalyptus steam room after) became an integral part of my mental health routine as the city moved from fall foliage to an icy New England winter and as I struggled through the decision to stay or go. For at least 45 minutes a few times a week, I awkwardly moved through poses that challenged my body and my mind. And while I never really got the hang of linking breath to movement, I did find at least a couple minutes of peace each time I tried.
I left in the end. After taking my torts final in fall of 2005, I said goodbye to Boston, law school, Joe, and my mat.
It took me another three years and change to come back to a yoga practice. This time, I found myself in a CorePower studio across Grand Street from my apartment in St. Paul. I dabbled at first, just trying to find some extra flexibility as I trained for the one and only marathon I’d ever run. But then I started finding refuge in the heat of the studio and the challenges of a vinyasa flow.
Yoga became my on- and off-again love as I stumbled through the next few years of both internal and external heartaches. I found myself in the studio more frequently after breakups or when I’d swear off alcohol for as long as I could. I was never as faithful as I wanted to be, but my mat was always willing to take me back whenever I’d show up.
After I got sober, I even got into a semi-regular rhythm and found myself showing up with with more frequency and consistency than I had ever been able to find while I was still drinking.
But then Joe and I got married in 2018 and I moved overseas to join him at post. Getting into a yogic groove became difficult again. I tried a couple of classes in Brussels but couldn’t find a studio that felt like home. The class times or locations were always inconvenient and the practices overwhelming the couple of times I did make it to a studio. Then there was my pregnancy followed by the pandemic. And then the move to Santo Domingo which mostly resulted in me shutting down. I had every intention of finishing up Adriene’s 30-day new year’s challenge last year but just couldn’t manage to fill in the boxes.
I don’t know what compelled me to pack my mat and my block in our air freight to Delhi. For the first couple of months here, Nicolas commandeered them for play props. I did make it to one class at the embassy taught by another spouse but couldn’t make the timings work to make it a regular thing. So the block became a train or a chair or a balance beam and my mat stayed in a corner collecting dust.
But as I traveled through the doldrums of a Delhi winter, I knew I needed to do something to shake things up. The ad in the school group chat came at just the right time: small group lessons here in the colony taught by a diplomatic spouse from another mission. And when I wrote back to say I was interested, I found out I had absolutely no excuse not to join — the classes were being held just a couple blocks away.
For the past month, I’ve been throwing on something kaftan-y to cover my legging-clad butt and slinging my mat over my shoulder before walking down the street a couple mornings a week.
The hatha style practices are slow but challenging. It’s a departure from the fast-paced flows I’ve gravitated to in the past and there’s times that I feel the itch to move more quickly through the poses. But the slowness is exactly what I need. My growth edge these days is settling into stillness both physically and mentally.
This last week has been stressful thanks to some preschool drama and my practice showed it today. I fell out eagle pose at least six times and found myself flopping a little bit faster to the floor than I would have liked out of the planks. But I didn’t tell myself I was “cheating” when I found rest in child’s pose when it got to be a little too much.
Maybe I’m not so out of practice after all.
