Yoga = revelations of a heroine

Don't ya just love it when you can clear your mind enough to actually hear your thoughts? It's been FOREVER since I attended a yoga class... like, try before Thanksgiving last year...

Photo credit: Lori Marois

and I've been a little under the weather, recently... and more sedentary than usual... I have been feeling the need for a good stretch. So I mustered my motivation and made myself go to the beginner yoga class at the studio down the street from me.

Oh the stretch. I ached for days after. But it was good aching... and I'll be going again tomorrow.

It's good for me to stretch my body and my mind. While I am doing yoga I try to focus on a couple of goals mentally (the poses and the teacher usually do enough for my physical stretching). First, I try to remember to breathe. That's hard for me! I get so tensed up, stressed about doing the pose correctly or about the creaking strain from my muscles uncurling... that I forget the basic concept of breathing... and the thing is that, if I can't remember to breathe, I surely can't quiet my mind...

Which is the second goal I focus on... a quiet mind... that can hear things that I need to hear instead of all the chatterings of anxiety and stress and "shoulds" that crowd in and cause me to forget to breathe :) (It's a vicious cycle, isn't it?). I don't think I usually accomplish either goal satisfactorily. Or at least I haven't yet... but if I don't go to yoga I don't make any progress at all... so going is good... and breathing is good... and then, during the shavasana (my favorite part, at the end) a thought popped into my head about my protagonist, my heroine... the thought that connected her to me in a way I had not considered before... I realized that I want to wake up and discover that I am a warrior, just as she does...

and now I'm ready to begin the first of many re-writes... I have a better understanding of what she needs to become who I want her to be.