Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Reaching my toes


Yoga gives me the time to sweat, reflect and feel the sensations in my body -- things that I choose not to acknowledge most of the time.
There are times when I get too busy to fully see and hear myself. I'd rather give time and focused attention for deadlines, files, and computations (my job). I become too stressed out that the little discomforts are too trivial to matter until they're too severe to be ignored.
Then I do yoga. Yoga is my teddy bear, my safe spot, the light that leads me back to myself when the world tries to pull me away.
Something that made me smile last night was when I discovered that I can now comfortably touch my toes in paschimottanasana (sitting forward fold). That has been my weakness ever since I started doing yoga. I can do the dancer's or camel pose with so much ease I make myself proud. But this little pose of sitting down, breathing in, elongating my body and folding from the hips, comes with a lot of discomfort that I just settled in placing my hands below my knees rather than my toes.
It was painful when I was starting. The teacher said that I have short hamstrings and that it will be better with continuous practice in time.
After almost 2 years of alternating yoga with other exercises, the pain is more tolerable but reaching my toes is still a challenge. I notice and disappoint myself constantly because of that.
Now that I practice at home, with no teacher but my favorite Fightmaster yoga video, without classmates that I'm compelled to compete against, I finally let go and not expect anything from my body. It does what it can and that's fine.
Finally, my body decided that tonight is the night. In the moment of accepting the limits of body and the mindfulness I gave in my sun salutations, I felt invincible. My body rewarded me with the best triumph in my short yoga journey -- reaching my toes.

4 comments:

  1. Thank you, I really stayed patient for it! :) I'll go read your post about yoga once it's published! I'm working on the crow pose now. My upper body is extremely weak so this is one difficult feat. What's your favorite yoga pose? :)

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  2. I don't know if I have a favourite one yet...but I am working on my inversions without a wall!

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  3. I'm not so good with inversions when I practice alone. I still have the fear of falling :(

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Jen