Why Yoga Keeps Teaching Me Things?
I learn the yoga lessons again and again with each pose and breath. After fifteen plus years, I can still do a yoga tree, but it is the Plank and Downward Dog that may have said their goodbyes. One plank held wrong last October and held for too many years, perhaps. I missed the whole point of having a flexible body, mind, and spirit. For I sustained a wrist injury that turned into a hand cyst. I tried to soothe the hand cyst with ice and by eliminating the hand poses. It kept inflaming. For six months, I also tried acupuncture, which shrunk the cyst to a certain degree only to see it flare up at odd intervals.
Now the hand cyst is gone thanks to a hand surgeon and I am on the mend. With hand exercises at physical therapy and my regular mix of cardio, I am finding joy again in slow gentle stretches on my yoga matt. I am rediscovering the meditative parts of yoga.
This week I played sound bath music as I did yoga bridge and leg extensions and the butterfly poses with breath in and breath out and found renewed peace and a thank you to the body and mind for being flexible enough to adapt. I even found a few yoga trees held, albeit a little bit gentler after a cardio spin class and my tree stood strong. I am reminded of a meditative lesson about trees that I feel in my body now. They move with the wind while their roots stay strong.
