I Still Believe In Yoga

Oh, hi. It’s been quite a while, eh?

Where we left off, I was blissing out about tree leaves and connectedness on the eve of the summer solstice. (And then having mixed feelings about the corporate and competitive aspects of yoga Instagram challenges).

Summer 2015
Fittingly, right after the year’s longest light on that day, the darkness crept in. While staring glassy-eyed at tree leaves in the park that day, I was also cringing through side planks with wrist pain that became unbearable enough to send me marching into urgent care three days later. I left with a heavy splint, painkillers, a tentative diagnosis of tendonitis, and orders to avoid yoga for six weeks.

The underlying diagnosis was excessive competitiveness and starstruck fervor. Back in March, I’d attended a disastrous afternoon arm balance workshop with a certain Well-Known Yoga Teacher. While stranded at a highway truck stop during a surprise snowstorm on the way home, I vowed to practice every day and succeed at those advanced arm balances that had eluded me during the workshop. (Even the ones I’d never heard of.)

Any reasonable, safety-minded yoga teacher will tell you that the path to arm balance accomplishment is not to begin obsessively practicing the same few poses, repeatedly placing your entire body weight on your wrists — and then practicing harder when you begin experiencing wrist pain.

It was also around this time that I realized why my “returning in spring 2015” yoga teaching job was not, in fact, returning — ever. Funding had been pulled at the center where I’d taught. The director was gone. The center had permanently shut down.

At a local yoga festival in August, I networked at the essential oils booth with a teacher who was opening a studio. Perfect. I contacted her afterward and never heard back. Unfortunately, applying for yoga teaching jobs is no different from job hunting in any other industry — responses are rare. (I did, however, win a brand-new Jade mat for $9 in a curiously low-participation silent auction, so let’s not make this a total pity-fest.)

Meanwhile, the wrist pain persisted. After a couple months of a heavily modified practice, I visited an orthopedist and, one ultrasound later, learned I had not tendonitis but a synovial cyst. Treatment options were waiting, cortisone shots for temporary relief and ultimately surgery. I decided to wait a little longer.

And, of course, there was the Instagram challenge in July, which only furthered my frustration with my faltering, non-aesthetically pleasing practice — and my perhaps misplaced annoyance with the hashtaggable “live, laugh, love”/“bikini on a beach”/“detox smoothie” aspects of yoga.

Fall 2015
By September, I was no longer regularly attending the advanced classes twice week at my longtime studio. The pressure and anxiety had become unbearable as my old teacher training classmates kept snapping up teaching gigs, which were usually the topic of conversation. Plus the whole “I don’t even remember what downward dog feels like anymore thanks to this wrist cyst” problem.

Yoga devotees love their natural remedies and all, but sometimes you gotta go with modern medicine. On October 9, It was time for the steroid shot. My wrist swelled up and felt alarmingly disembodied, straight out of the “Comfortably Numb” lyrics, but I tried not to think about it and boarded a train into New York. After about a week, I was surprised to notice that I could bear weight on my wrist again. First upward facing dog since June? A nearly tearful occasion.

The seasonal turnaround seemed to continue later in October, when out of nowhere, I was invited to audition to teach at my studio. And a change did happen, but in a most unexpected way. The audition was a horrible experience and I wound up making the painful, surprisingly emotional decision to break up with the studio after more than 3.5 years. Yoga has a weird way of mirroring human relationships — sometimes you can’t see the flaws or your own unhealthy attachment until you get conspicuously hurt.

My newly healthy(ish) wrist and I — minus my engraved bracelet that reminded me too much of the old studio — bounced around to several local venues. I loved taking classes anonymously; no one knew I was an unsuccessful yoga teacher and a stalled-out, embittered student in danger of abandoning yoga altogether. But class schedules and teaching styles failed to align and no new favorite studio appeared.

In late November, a nearby gym finally opened, leading to unexpected passionate affairs with kickboxing, running, and especially Zumba. “This is just like yoga,” I told myself as I struggled mightily in the back row of Zumba class, mostly concentrating on not crashing into anyone.

I was moving, strengthening muscles, increasing flexibility, and seeking to maintain that magical balance between being conscious of the moves but not overthinking them. No one knew who I was. I blazed through 8,000-plus Fitbit-recorded steps in an hour-long class. Most of all, it was fun.

Winter 2015–2016
It had been several months since I’d set foot in a yoga studio and almost as long since I’d even completed a full practice with an online class. The funny part: I’d kept my promise made back in March to practice every day — technically. Usually just a pose or two. So, yes, it is possible to maintain a “daily practice” but be 98% done with yoga mentally. Hashtagyogaeveryday!

Finally, something changed. No Wise Yoga Voice spoke to me on a magical, mystical day in February. No om symbols appeared in cloud formations. I just noticed that I was getting sick more often than usual, despite moving further toward veganism. I felt constantly constricted and restless, despite the energy expended in Zumba and on treadmills in my fruitless pursuit of a runner’s high (all I got was even tighter hips and hamstrings). And my shoulders hurt.

There it was: I needed to get back to yoga — full, legitimate practices. There would be no smooth re-entry at the same level as when I (essentially) stopped. I’d probably be even further back thanks to my new running-induced tightness. I would have to accept that.

With no plan for my first home practice, I pressed play on a favorite album and forced myself to keep moving until the music ended. Not so bad. I finally invested in a yoga wheel to encourage more backbending and open up my newly office desk-i-fied shoulders.

I didn’t venture back into a studio until yesterday, February 19, afraid to fully discover how much my practice that I’d worked so hard on had deteriorated. Really, I only went because I had a day off work and realized I had just three weeks left to use up the classes on an expiring 10-class pass.

The challenging flow class was no glamorous, yoga-angels-shining-from-heaven experience. I was still managing the aftermath of a respiratory illness and had to stock tissues on the corner of my mat. I needed repeated hip alignment adjustments and fell out of bird of paradise pose.

As my legs wobbled slightly during the walk across the parking lot after class, unaccustomed to this newly reopened space for hip mobility, I knew every muscle would be aching the next day. Welcome back, you sweet old sensation.

Yoga breaks you down, opens you up, builds you up. This is it. This is what I need to be doing. This is what has been missing. There is no substitute.

So there it is. It’s not all sunshine and cute leggings (or even metaphors about tree leaves!) in the world of yoga. The more we openly acknowledge that, the more authentic, approachable, and healthy the yoga world can be. Sometimes our wrists hurt us; sometimes our beloved studios hurt us. Sometimes we get fed up with the battle for scarce teaching jobs and jealous of our classmates. Sometimes we like Zumba better for a little while.

But I still believe in yoga.