My First Sun Salute

My first sun salute happened at age 16. Obsessed with all things India, I checked out this yoga book from my school library, because I had this desire to do yoga, but was super freaked out because of my fundamentalist Christian parents and the upbringing that equated yoga with devil-worship. But I felt called to do yoga. I can’t explain it, other than something in my heart and body said, ‘try this,’ and I had to follow that calling.

So I fumbled through a sun salutations, in secret, at night, in my bedroom. It was hard, looking at pictures from a book and trying to figure out how to link the sequence or figure out the right alignment without any verbal directions or hands-on tweaking. I fumbled on until the book had to be returned, and I smuggled it back into my library to not be checked out again, by me.

Not willing to risk delving deeper into yoga, I gave it a break, for about a year, until a summer or two later when I came across an excellently marketed product called iFit yoga, that had stripped the Indian spiritual and philosophy, from the asanas and made it appealing as a form of exercise. I snapped up the packaged mat/block/strap/bag and audio CD, and began practicing for 45-60 minutes every night (again, in my bedroom, in semi-secret). I felt more open about my practice, but focused on the exercise benefits.

My practice has waxed and waned for years. Whole years have gone by where I haven’t actively practiced asana, and simply focused on breathwork, or philosophy, or at the very least, simply reading yoga magazines and wearing yoga pants to the grocery store.

But I miss it.

The asana practice, that is.

So, today, while Potamus was sleeping, I did some asthanga yoga to a youtube video. It felt hard, and good, and right. And it also felt a little bit scary. Because I’ve been on this journey for years, and I love it, and it feels different than running, because it feels like it hits my soul in a different way. I avoid because it’s hard to go inside myself and feel things I don’t want to feel and be exposed to the big picture of suffering and complexity that seems overwhelming. Why this happens during yoga and not other exercise (yet) is a mystery to me, but there it is. In some ways I am still both drawn and frightened by yoga, as that teenager fundamentalist was drawn and frightened. For different reasons.

The ebb has come back to flow, and I think I might do asanas more regularly. And I want to expose Potamus to yoga, but that’s a whole other post for another day…

How breastfeeding is helping me become a runner

just after my 13:30 (plus dog-poop stop) mile run.

 

Whenever people would talk about running, I would usually jump in and say that “I only run if I’m being chased…and by someone much larger than me, someone I wouldn’t fight.” It would get laughs, but over the years I realized that defining myself as a not-runner had prevented me from exploring a form of exercise that is easily accessible to me. Running, like my love of yoga, doesn’t require a ton of equipment. It’s my body, some basic clothing (and shoes) and a place to run.

Yesterday I ran a mile in 13:30, which included 2 dog-poop pitstops, so I’m thinking I actually ran the mile in maybe 13 minutes. I was short on time, so I ran 1 mile faster than trying for longer. While the race is only 2 weeks away, I’ve only managed to run 1.7 miles at my furthest. I think with a little bumping up my game, I should be good to at least run 3/4 of the 5k on the 16th!

And I horned in on a friend’s facebook post about running the Hot Chocolate 5k in March, and asked if she wanted company. She was doing it alone, since her friend was doing the 15k version, and she was thrilled that I asked! That makes 2 5k’s in the first quarter of the year, which is exciting. I also think that if I decide that I don’t want to keep running, that doing two races is pretty respectable for a newbie.

I’ve been surprised at my dedication to training, even running in the rain Seattle Sunshine. I attribute this dedication to my decision to breastfeed. That might seem strange, especially since I avoided exercise at all costs for the first few eleven months of Potamus’ life for fear that my milk supply would dwindle (and because of sheer exhaustion). Every time I think of running I conjur up images of my 10th grade volleyball coach making us run endless Swedish miles on the track, her small, marathon runner’s body, pushing us to puke-or-pass-out levels. Or my basketball coach yelling from the sidelines to run faster, harder, when I just couldn’t do it. Needless to say, those yelling/shaming tactics didn’t really work on me. In fact, they pushed my anxiety over the edge to a level of sheer panic. I’ve self-induced vomitting only a handful of times, and those were all to get out of practice.

But there was a time when I enjoyed running. As a kid I played tag for hours, and football and kick-the-can in the neighborhood, and on the playground at school. I enjoyed running. It wasn’t until I had to run for a grade that I understood what people had been talking about when they complained of exercise.

So I’m learning to see myself as a maybe-runner. Or even, instead of trying to box in my identity into that category of runner, it’s must, I run, sometimes, and it feels good. And when it doesn’t feel good I am able to keep a longer perspective in mind. And THAT I attribute to breastfeeding. Because if I had given up when it had gotten hard, Potamus would have had formula since day 3. Or month 4 when I was back to work and having to come home every 3-6 hours. Or when he day-weaned but nursed every 1-2 hours all night. It’s not that I never reached a goal, or pushed through hard times to get their, before I breastfed, but certainly not to such a physical level. My goals had always been mental, like finishing school or writing a paper, this feels so different. The daily physical toll with an end-goal in mind.

I’m not there, yet, but I’m on my way. Pushing through on the daily, my eyes set on the goal, and who knows, maybe even after my two races I’ll keep running. After all, I haven’t weaned Potamus yet, after we made it to our year goal!