Yoga: It Just Seems to Click

I cannot be the only one...who has found themselves surprisingly enjoying something that didn't really click with them when they tried it before. I don't know if it is a change of environment, my dire need for some serious "me" time, or my extensive Mama patience, but I have recently found myself enamored by my new yoga practice.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I ventured into a Vinyasa Flow yoga class with a friend a couple months ago and have been hooked ever since. While this particular Vinyasa Flow class was new to me, I wasn't exactly a stranger to yoga. I had taken a smattering of classes here and there in my twenties, but it wasn't until now, in my late thirties, that the practice of yoga really spoke to me.

Besides the obvious challenges that yoga presents to me; the postures, the balance, the shaky and sore muscles, there is something else that calls me back to the mat each time.

I noticed this magnetic pull to the yoga studio at the end of class late one Friday afternoon. This particular yoga class had me sweating my way through many a chaturanga and I was feeling well deserving of the impending savasana. As I lay on my back in corpse pose, the instructor, in her soothing cadence, asked her students to surrender to gravity and only focus on being in that moment.

I did.

I surrendered and I let the stresses of Mamahood go, even if just for that moment. In that moment I felt fantastic and when I stepped outside the studio, into the gym where sweaty guys wearing tank tops were grunting while lifting absurdly giant weights, I felt lifted, I felt refreshed, and I felt ready to do the rest of my Mama chores with a smile on my face.

That was it for me, I was a yoga-goner. From that day on, as soon as I said namaste at the end of practice, my mind went right into planning mode. I needed to know when I would be able to find my sitting bones back on that mat. I would stop at the posted yoga schedule at the front desk of the gym, iPhone in hand pulling up my calendar to plan my next drishti gaze before I even had time to put my flip flops all the way on.

I think that finding a place as a Mama that you can focus on doing something good for your mind, body, and spirit without dodging Legos, thinking about the lunches that need to be made for the morning, or the dryer reminding you with it's ridiculously obnoxious buzz that there is laundry that needs to be folded, is rare. My brain is stretched pretty close to it's limit on a regular basis, maybe that's why the sweet relief of yoga has cozied itself up to the limbic lobe in my brain and keeps me coming back for more.

Be it the relief of the days stresses, the physical challenges of balance, or even the community of those who step into that studio to work on being a better version of themselves all while smiling and supporting each other, yoga has me smitten and it just seems to click with me.