Tag: Daily Practice

^{(Title Image: Photo by Martin Dawson on Unsplash)}

One of the striking benefits of mindfulness is that it amplifies the richness of our world. On a personal level, it’s revealed to me how tightly my mind and body are connected.

I truly believe that when you calm the mind, you calm the body and vice versa. This is particularly important for me because 1) I am prone to anxiety and 2) some of the breast cancer drugs I was given were cardiotoxic. Therefore, I have an inherent interest in keeping calm and avoiding stress.

Avoiding stress. HA!

After several anxious weeks that included trying to secure a new apartment and the possibility of serving as a juror on a 4-week criminal trial (for better or worse, neither one has happened), I found myself drained and unbalanced.

So for my Advent commitment, I’m working on getting my sense of balance back. And while I realize that yoga is much more than just one aspect of the physical practice, in my case, I believe that being able to calm my body, find a point of focus (drishti) and work on my balance go hand in hand with balancing my mind .

The moves that I’m using are uncomplicated and unimpressive, but I’m getting back to basics and rebuilding my balance foundation from there, even though I’ve found that there are more advanced balance moves that I can do that don’t seem to give me as much trouble. Go figure.

My daily practice has incorporated the following poses (asanas) with the intention of holding each for a prolonged period of time:

Standing wind-release pose (Tadasana Pavanmuktasana): This is a classic beginner pose that I chose as a starting point. From Mountain Pose (Tadasana), shifting weight into supporting leg, float the other leg up forward, knee bent with options to draw it into your chest or, which I find more comfortable, have my hands in prayer or support the raised leg under the knee.

Tree pose (Vrksasana): This is the classic tree pose, weight on supporting leg, other leg bent with knee pointing to the side, but with the sole of foot on the inside of the supporting calf instead of the inner thigh, as we usually see it portrayed. I chose this because of the hip opening aspect and by keeping the foot on the lower leg, all my focus is on balance, without having flexibility become an issue, because that is also affected by stress–I found that certain muscles tighten up and throw things out of whack.

Warrior Three (Virabhadrasana III): This is an intermediate level pose in which body weight is in the supporting leg with the upper body bent forward parallel to the floor in line with the hips, and the non supporting leg stretched out back, also in line with the hips. I play around with arm positioning, alternating between arms stretched forward past my head, out to the side or behind me.

Has this been a humbling experience? Yes, it has.

Balance poses are not my “thing”. They used to be no big deal, but that was in my pre-cancer life. Physical balance took a huge hit during cancer treatment and I found myself strangely off-kilter afterwards. Aromatase inhibitors’ effects on my joints certainly didn’t help either. It was exhausting to fight this deterioration when I already felt spent. Years later, I had been avoiding balance asanas in my practice, which means that what was suboptimal has become worse.

Starting out this time around I was terrible. And I mean embarrassingly terrible. When I moved into the first asana, it felt as though I’d been plugged into a light socket with nervous energy coursing through me, making it so difficult to be still. I couldn’t hold any poses for very long and Warrior Three felt like a constant struggle.

But even in the space of a week’s practice, I am getting better. These asanas were chosen with ease of progress in mind and I’ve decided to keep going with this well into the New Year. I can definitely use the work.

While it’s frustrating feeling like I’ve regressed so much, I guess that means my progress will seem even better, right?