On Doing Hard Things.

Because life is fucking hard.

On April 5, 2020, three weeks into pandemic lockdowns, I graduated from yoga teacher training. Via Zoom, yes, but it still happened.

A lot of people have taken yoga teacher training. It seems to be almost as ubiquitous as graduating from high school where I live in California.

It’s a pretty significant accomplishment for me though because it’s something that I never thought that I could actually achieve in this body.  

I’ve been chronically ill since I was 12 years old. Movement of all kinds has been limited for me for most of my life. I hated P.E. because it caused me so much pain and I thought pain like that was normal, so felt like I was just weak because others could do it easily and I couldn’t.

I did a lot of low impact dancing when I was a kid and swam whenever I was lucky enough to have access to a pool. I adored roller skating, as long as I didn’t fall anyway. I had various wrist and ankle sprains throughout my young skating vocation.

I tried cross-country running in high school. That was a fucking insane one day venture. I tried track & field as well, even throwing the shot-put and discus for a short time, but that also proved to be quite difficult for my body. I did letter in track and field, but that was for being an unofficial manager (that’s a story for another day).

When I was 19 I joined a gym and started working out with machines and weights and found that to be much easier than so many of the sports that I had previously tried that required running. But it was still an off and on thing because my pain level would skyrocket and I would end up in a flare.

I didn’t understand how that worked back then. I didn’t even know what a flare was, I just knew that I was always sick and I would often overdo it because the gym staff told me that I wasn’t doing enough to change my body (i.e. to lose enough weight to get the Kate Moss waif look that was currently in vogue).

I was overjoyed when a friend brought me to a country club like gym with a pool where they gave me a free month’s membership. I went swimming almost daily during that month and was feeling really good, but the membership ran out and I couldn’t afford to pay the astronomical fees so that didn’t last long.

After having kids, I continued with walking (sometimes even hikes if I could manage), low key dancing, stationary bikes, various workout videos and an elliptical machine. I tried some step trainings and a kettlebell workout for a very short time that my back did not like. But shortly before I turned 30, I discovered yoga.

I had never been to a yoga class. I didn’t even know anyone who practiced yoga at the time, but I found a few DVD’s at my local library and after renewing them incessantly, bought a couple that I used frequently at home.

I couldn’t come close to doing what Rodney Yee could with his pretzel body in the videos, but I did my best and began a physical practice that was purely for fitness (I knew nothing about yoga other than the asana back then). But I got into a rhythm where I would practice daily even if only a few sun salutations.

Now, I know that most of my movements were a bit off and I wasn’t getting as much benefit from them as I could have, but it was still something. And it was something that was in my realm.

In the spring of 2018, I got really sick and it went on for nearly a year. I was in and out of the hospital and doctors’ offices and received tests and treatments on an almost daily basis for months. I lost 30 pounds in 3 weeks because I couldn’t really eat and couldn’t hold anything down. I rarely slept more than 3 hours a night. I had become agoraphobic, had panic attacks multiple times a day and night and was severely depressed. I was slowly starving to death.

After what seemed like an eternity, I started doing a little bit better and after moving in with friends for a short time to get the thousands in medical debt taken care of, my partner, my youngest child and I all moved to the west coast in the summer of 2019.

Although I was doing better physically, my mental health was still all over the place. We hadn’t found the right treatment yet and I was really struggling. My oldest had moved out at 18 and started his life out of the state. My partner started a new job and my youngest whom I had taught at home for six years prior was now in a public junior high in preparation for a specialized high school program. I didn’t have any family or friends where we lived and was still very often afraid to leave home on my own. I was alone most of the time and didn’t know what to do with myself.

In a really low moment, I reached out to an old friend. I had attended a yoga class with her once when visiting her area and she encouraged me to go to a local affiliate studio. It took me almost a month to sum up the courage to even call the studio. But I finally did and a week later went to my first class. A power yoga class. Hot power yoga. And I completed the entire class.

I went back again and again. And while I found that I was sore and tired and I often couldn’t keep up with the class, I usually felt normal person after a workout sore and tired, not chronically ill person kicking my pain levels and fatigue up into a flare sore and tired.

Here though is where things were a bit tricky. While I had already been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, my doctor and I were still working on the correct medication and dosage combination and I didn’t really know what my mania symptoms were like. Looking back, I can now see that much of that time I was manic and my mania often presents with a diminished feeling of pain, kind of like working out on heavy killers, you think you can do so much more than what you actually can.

So while I felt like yoga on its own was my savior and keeping me from crashing back into a deep, dark depression (which it kind of was), in reality, I was in a month’s long hypomanic episode where I pushed myself too far. And when I finally came back to a stable place (a little over a month into the pandemic), I found that there was a lot that I couldn’t do because I had gone too far and injured myself.

But that’s not my point. My point is, I did something great. Something that I refuse to give bipolar mania credit for. Mania may have given me a diminished sense of pain, a lot of extra energy and a decreased need for sleep, and don’t get me wrong, all of that helped a lot, but I am the one that actually completed Yoga Teacher Training, not my disease. It was all me.

I’m the one who pushed through a power yoga class at least daily and sometimes 2 or 3 classes a day during training periods despite pain and exhaustion. I’m the one who taught small bits to my partner and kiddo and sometimes worked with others that were in the training program with me. I read, I did all the homework, I printed posters and flash cards and made recordings to memorize poses and sequence and Sanskrit words. I’m the one who did it all.

I never had any intention of actually becoming a yoga teacher and now 2 ½ years later, I still have not taught a single class. But I wanted to do something. Actually complete something. Something that was just for me. Something that my body and mind couldn’t hijack and take away from me. And I did.

With the pandemic, my injuries, illnesses, medications, separation with my partner and all the other madness that has occurred over the last three years, I’m 20 pounds heavier and currently unable to do about 50% of the yoga that I could at that point. But I haven’t given up.

I’ve taken several other trainings online since then, a really important one in Yin yoga and I’m currently taking an accessible yoga course where I’m learning how to accommodate the yoga to fit my body instead of the other way around. I’m re-learning how to do yoga asana in a way that my body can keep up and that my body and mind can flourish. Sometimes it feels like I’m starting from scratch, but I’m slowly coming around to being content in this place, in this body. To know that I don’t have to do Hot Power Yoga daily in order to have a successful practice for myself. To know that I can do what my body is capable of and still be healthy. To know that I can be a fat girl and still do yoga. To know that my body is beautiful even when it’s in a state that I am not particularly happy with.

Now when I look at the picture above and it makes me sad because I’m not that person anymore I know that I can still do more than I think. I can do hard things.