Do You Do Yoga?

My friend Clare asked a simple question in an email today - “how’s yoga?” I wrote back a ’short’ response the ended up being much longer than I planned. As a result, I worked through some stuff that has been bubbling up. She is awesome that way - knowing the right questions to ask is the important thing.

I mentioned that I felt like I was ‘just maintaining’ at the moment with respect to my practice. She reminded me that maintaining is what we need to do during big transitions in our lives, and that is where I am at the moment.

It reminded me of phase transitions in thermodynamics. When water is melted to ice, for example, there is a period in the transition where you can add heat, but nothing seems to be happening. However, in order to make the transition to the next phase, you need to keep adding energy. That is how I feel at the moment. A lot of energy is going out, but it seems like nothing is happening. Like a phase transition in ice, there is a lot of internal work going on at the moment. I wonder what the next phase will look like for me. I suspect it has something to do with a big belly.

There have been some interesting physical changes. Most notable, my sacrum seems to have moved backward a bit. It feels different to do Dvi Pada Pitham (bridge pose) now. My sacrum presses more firmly into the ground. That’s kind of cool. The not so nice change is that my shoulders are very irritate from sleeping on my side. I am going to visit a doctor recommended by my OB as soon as I can get an appointment. I have been doing a half baby prep, half shoulder support practice to compensate, but I need some external help to get the alignment improved.

In the mean time, I’ll keep putting in the energy I need to complete this phase transition successfully. I must remember that my practice is a source of energy for me - the more I put into it, the more I get out of it.