Last week I wrote about not quitting.
Today I rolled up my mat and walked out of a yoga class.
I was going to tell you I quit, then caught myself in how hypocritical I was being. Yet twenty minutes in,
I knew I couldn’t stay.
I arrived ready to sweat. My head was in that space where anything felt possible.
I was up for the challenge.
I was ready to follow the flow.
Then my left shoulder tapped on my right,
“Hey, I don’t know about this. I don’t think I’m up for all these planks and plows, not today. Can you tell her we need to quit?”
She responded with a tone of irritation,
“Shh…not this again. Not today, anyway!”
You see, we hadn’t heard from him in a while. We were starting to forget about the pain he caused. We liked life and moving when he wasn’t nagging us.
We wanted to ignore him.
Until I reminded her what happens when we ignore him. He doesn’t just go away. He only gets louder. His irritation can become unbearable. His setbacks can make ordinary days very painful.
When he starts whispering, it’s usually for a reason.
I knew we couldn’t stay.
We had to do something more difficult than push through the flow of the class. We had to stop, at least for today.
I thought we had fixed his issues.
We went to therapy and did rehab.
I thought he was better as I had started to forget about our painful past.
Yet, when he started whispering, “Not today,” I knew I had to listen.
He wasn’t telling me to quit.
He wasn’t telling me we’d never flow again.
He was telling me he was tired.
He was telling me he didn’t want to go back to that pain.
He needed me to know he didn’t have the strength to hold and balance what I was asking of him, at least not today.
He was asking me to listen.
I told my mind and body, we have to respect his limitations. We had to do something harder and more uncomfortable than push through the pain (we were good at that part).
We had to surrender.
Ego dropped to the floor, humility showed up with a smile, grace stepped to the plate.
We smiled at our instructor as we rolled up our mat and said, “Thank you, but we can’t do this, not today, anyway.”
