Category: Yoga

On the Run

On By Mary LennoxIn Grief, Loss, Motherhood, Running, Time, YogaLeave a comment

(or Left, Right, Left, Right…)

Once upon a time, I fancied myself to be a runner.  Before I had kids, I used to run regularly and it was my exercise of choice.  I preferred running outside, but probably did most of my runs on a treadmill at the gym at work because it was convenient and appealed to my statistics-oriented brain.  I could monitor and track time, distance, speed, calories, all right on the treadmill console.  I kept a running log in a spreadsheet (of course!), charting my progress to run longer and faster and tracking when it was time to buy new running shoes.

I really started running seriously when we lost the baby.  I poured most of my grief onto the treadmill as running felt like something I could actually control.  I could control the speed of the treadmill or how far I wanted to run each day.  I got lost in tracking the numbers and statistics and could therefore avoid dealing with the overwhelming grief I experienced inside but wasn’t able to process.  I loved getting lost in my own head for a while, far away from the torturous real-world.

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This Ashram Life

On By Mary LennoxIn Time, YogaLeave a comment

(or What Do You Mean There’s No Coffee?)

Sometimes I think that it might be nice to live in a convent.  I find the idea of always knowing that you have shelter, food, a job and a purpose in life to be quite comforting.  Never mind all the many sacrifices required: I’d nearly trade marriage and motherhood and free-will for a life where I didn’t have to worry about bills and career and retirement.  I said nearly.  Plus I’m not religious, much less Catholic.

This weekend I got a 48-hour insight into what a monastery life might look like.  In search of a break from the unrelenting demands of motherhood and an intense need to reconnect with the outdoors, my own breath and spirit, I headed to a yoga retreat at a nearby ashram.

I’d never been to an ashram before, and I probably should have done more research first (although to be fair, the website could have included a bit more information about exactly what I had just signed up for).  The specifics of the retreat really didn’t matter to me; I just wanted a time-out for a few days and the promise of hiking and yoga was enough for me to commit.

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You Are Not Alone

On By Mary LennoxIn Loss, Love, Time, YogaLeave a comment

(or This One Time, At Summer Camp…)

Twice a week, just after lunch, you can usually find me downstairs in the fitness center where I work, suiting up for yoga class.  We are very lucky that we have two wonderful yoga teachers, exceptional in their own right and not just by traveling corporate yoga teacher standards.  We have not had nearly such good luck with the substitutes, though.  There was the one who didn’t know the class was only 45 minutes, and had to bring everything to an abrupt end when the angry meditators assembled outside the door, impatiently waiting to be let into the room.  There was the one who simply ended the class without shavasana.  For those of you who are not yogis, this is practically sacrilege.  Many of us spend 40 (or more) minutes in practice twisting our bodies into strange poses and awkward forms just to get to those blissful 5 minutes of corpse pose that is promised at the end.  There was the one who was so overly obsessed with proper form I have sworn to turn around leave the class if she ever subs again, such was my irritation level at the end of the last class she taught.

And then there was the one who brought along a playlist unlike any other I have ever encountered in a yoga class.  It was bold and loud and so completely out of sync with what I need to practice yoga.  And then, about halfway through the class, a familiar tune rose up:

Another day has gone
I’m still all alone
How could this be
You’re not here with me
You never said goodbye
Someone tell me why
Did you have to go
And leave my world so cold

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