A few months ago, my life was in complete chaos, and I felt it spinning out of control. My marriage was in shambles, the house was a disaster area, my weight had ballooned to its highest point ever, and the steady flow of my massage business had slowed to a trickle. I was in trouble. I felt adrift; I knew I could be close to losing everything, but I wasn’t sure how to proceed.
Then, the universe, in its divine love and wisdom, seemed to grant me another chance. A winter storm dumped twenty inches of snow onto northwest Iowa. Joel, my husband, then had no choice but to spend the holidays with me and my family in Ohio. With no projects to tackle, articles to write, bikes to fix, or friends to go out drinking with, we were forced to coexist 24 hours a day for a week. The quarantine was just what we needed. After a few days, we actually started liking each other again, and by the end of the week, we both had a sense of renewed hope.
In recent years, it has become the fashion in New Age circles to eschew New Year’s resolutions in favor of setting a specific intention that will hopefully determine the tone of the next year. While I definitely had some resolutions in mind, I decided to also opt for the latter, and to choose “persistence” as my key word for the next twelve months.
Why persistence? Call me an indigo child, a dabbler, jack of all trades (master of none), or whatever you want; I have a short attention span. Going back to childhood, I’ve had a range of hobbies and interests that include rock collecting, stamp collecting, sewing, jewelry making, batik, drawing, quilting, learning languages, snowshoeing, embroidery, painting, astronomy, astrology, swimming, geocaching, hula hooping, the ukulele… the list goes on. I have been blessed with a lot of natural abilities, but I’ve never stuck with anything long enough or given it enough attention to be really good at it.
I’ve taken my new intention to heart the last few weeks. Since the New Year, I’ve made a point to try to keep the house cleaner, and to make a healthy dinner every night and help Joel with the dishes afterwards. But in order to test my mettle, I decided that I needed to commit to something in which I am starting out at a true disadvantage: yoga.
I suck at yoga. Even though I have always been very interested in it, I have steered clear of it because of my general lack of grace and physical ineptitude. My hamstrings are so tight you could bounce quarters off of them. In order to take back control of my life, though, I know that I have to start paying better attention to my body and doing nice things for it. However, even though yoga in America is often practiced simply as a physical exercise, there are also mental and spiritual components. Thus begins The Yoga Experiment. I have decided to see what would happen if I spend at least an hour a day doing yoga at a minimum of five days a week. I will be attending classes at the Living Yoga Center in Urbana for the next full year, and in the meantime, reading books and learning about yoga and other “natural” and “alternative health” therapies around Champaign-Urbana.
All experiments have hypotheses. In one year, I hope to be a few pounds lighter, a lot more flexible, and to feel more clear-headed and connected with the world around me in a deeper way. What will happen? I’ll check in here once a week to report my progress.
Namaste.