Self-regulation is a practice, not a trophy to be won.

Running used to be my meditation, my exercise, and my reset. It only now occurred to me how much of a similar function as yoga running used to have in my life.

I thought about it as I tried to sit in stillness this morning and just couldn’t find the rhythm. I looked at my clock every 3 minutes, and felt restless and fidgety for the full sit. But still I sat. And still I felt better, more rested, more focused at the end of it.

Running used to be like that. Always those first 2-3 minutes of finding the rhythm, where the ground felt hard and inhospitable, and the distance ahead way too long. But most days I’d soon settle into a cadence that worked, my body remembering what it needed to do, and the rhythmic breathing and inherent mind-body regulation that comes with it for me compelling me forward. And even on those rare days where the entire run was somehow “off,” I felt better at the end of it. As if the running had done something to my body-mind-soul complex to help it, despite itself.

I can’t run any more for any number of aging body-parts reasons. But I can sit. And I can flow. And I find tremendous solace in this fact. It tells me I will always be able to find a way to self-regulate. That it will always be a challenge, and that I can always work at it.

In short: that it is a practice rather than a trophy to be won.

I like that.