Getting unstuck

It feels like ages since I wrote anything.

I mean it exactly like that: it feels like ages. I can obviously look at my blog and see that I haven’t written anything for a week. But there is also a physical sensation, as if something is stuck, and at the same time, the longer goes by, the harder it is to sit down to the computer and just write.

I feel the same way when I haven’t practiced yoga for a while. To be fair, it is rare that more than 2 days go by without yoga these days, and even rarer that there is a longer gap. But it happens. And when it does, it is as if my body already shut down. I know it will feel better once I move, but everything in me screams no.

I think about this a lot. The things I know would make me feel better, but that I don’t do anyway. The things I know make me feel worse, but that I keep doing regardless. The spaciousness I know I need to breathe, but that I don’t always allow.

I am getting better at insisting on the elements I know I need, a daily yoga practice being one of them.

If I am honest, I know that yoga asana practice is easy for me to commit to, because it is physical: I can do it even on those days when my mind is agitated and my breathing shallow. I can even do it on those days when the agitation and shallowness are unchanged by the practice. In short, I can move through the motions and, through that, get to a different and better place. And because I have done it so many times before, I know in my body that it is true.

But I am also getting better at insisting on the elements I need that are harder to define and act out clearly. Time. Authenticity. Connection.

These elements don’t come without pain. Which is, of course, why they are difficult to insist on. But they are where life and joy reside. Little by little, I get myself unstuck.