I've flirted with yoga for years, starting in 2000, when I picked up a combo AM/Stress/PM DVD from the Whole Foods where I was working, in Austin, Texas. My marriage was sputtering out, and I was looking for anything to give me a distraction, and hopefully, physical/emotional benefit. I struggled with the poses (I have a lot of stiffness due to fibromyalgia), but was able to get through each program with general success. The first time I attempted the stress yoga sequence, I broke down at the end and cried. It's true that certain poses open emotional floodgates in your body, just as when a massage therapist who understands the mind-body connection targets emotional centers that are holding old emotional pain. Perhaps it is because of that very phenomenon that my practice has been spotty; I seem to look for reasons not to do yoga, not only because it is a challenge for me physically, but it also forces me to listen to the deepest parts of myself. I seem to be okay with self-analysis when it involves my intellect, but it gets overwhelmingly intense when I start listening to my body.
Nevertheless, since returning to Kentucky and reevaluating a lot of what is/isn't working in my life, I find myself finally turning to yoga without apprehension. I'll doubt I'll ever be a 6 am-in-the-morning practitioner, but I do find winding down the evening with the pm program settles the machinery of my ever-whirring mind. Even though it's low-impact, a couple of the poses are so challenging for me, I still wobble, and am relieved that no one is there to see me struggle and modify and look incredibly ungraceful.
One of the immediate benefits for me is that fall asleep much faster, and dream like a motherfucker. I haven't dreamt a lot in the last few months; I think that's because of some of the stressors in my life--my subconscious thinks it's just easier to go "dark"--and even though I feel a little wrung out in the mornings after the jumble of metaphors that have plumbed my head, I find I deal much better with the reality of the day, when I have done yoga.
I particularly seem to be having a lot of sex dreams, and finally with people I'd actually want to fuck, instead of previous dream suitors, like old bosses, Woody Allen and Tony Soprano. I had a particularly delicious dream last night about David Duchovny, probably because I had just watched his film House of D. Even with the pleasant imagery, there was still a feeling of deceit, or disappointment associated with the outcome, which is often the overarching emotion that occurs in dreams where I'm sleeping with stars. I know this points to the larger narrative of my life in many ways (leaving L.A. behind, not reaching the "heights" I wanted to in the industry, etc.), and I feel yoga is pressing my mind to work a lot of this stuff out.I think it's good for me to put this in print, because it forces me to stick with a goal (I'm still off aspartame, for instance!), and I know I can get lazy if I don't have the possibility of someone checking in to say "How's the yoga going?" So, while I don't expect to have Madonna's fabulous flexibility anytime soon (or any of her awesome achievements, for that matter), I do plan to continue doing yoga regularly for my health, and my sanity.
Namaste.
