Day 1

Ok, now I'm daunted . . .

Well maybe not daunted but I definitely got a wake up call of how hard this journey is going to be. Last night, as I was reading through Baron's book in preparation for the 40 Days, while I felt calm clearly a weird vibe was settling over the house - if I wasn't tipped off that our "kick off meal" the Beef Bourguignon wasn't done until after 10pm and was immediately relegated to the refrigerator for leftovers, I should have been tipped off by the fact that Brad fell asleep on my shoulder while I remained awake and watched the end of the Sunday night football game. In any case, I missed the signs, and sometime last night I got myself and my energy all out of sorts. I couldn't fall asleep and then when I did fall asleep I had horrible nightmares - the weird kind of dreams where they feel real and then have tragic but odd endings. None of the dreams had to do with yoga but I think they all had to do with my fear of failure or my lack of faith in my own strength. They were intense and I think I psyched myself out a bit. I woke up this morning and rolled over to Brad - "this is going to be a lot harder than I thought," I said.

This week I am to do 5 minutes of meditation, preferably in the morning, followed by a yoga routine that is supposed to take 20 minutes. Ha! While I found the meditation restful and fairly easy, the yoga practice was a bit awkward. First of all, it took me closer to 40 minutes to get my way through all the poses. My yoga mat kept slipping on the carpet under me and I had to keep awkwardly flipping through the pages of the book to see what my next pose was. I missed the heat of the yoga studio and I missed the sound of the instructor's voice calling out the poses as I moved through them.

In a lonely but oddly comforting way, this morning's practice reaffirmed that this is truly about being on your own. It was about the challenge of working through it yourself and working through your own embarrassment yourself . . . its funny that alone by yourself you still feel awkward and embarrassed by your own struggles in the yoga practice. It reminds me of the shame I felt in middle school when I wasn't "cool" enough and I felt that my existence was somehow, inherently, less "cool" than my peers. Like, somehow, magically, they were getting through their awkward ugly duckling years (as my Mother calls them) more gracefully than I was. I mean, really, who else is going to know if I look like a fool trying to figure out what the poses are? So much ego to let go of I suppose :)

I need to go do my last 5 minutes of meditation for the day - but I think I learned my lesson yesterday, I am going to save my "homework" reading for the morning - when its power to intimidate and overwhelm me is no more.

Until tomorrow,
Namaste