Daddy’s Yoga

Sometimes when in a deep stretching pose in yoga you suddenly realize you are completely tensed up. The point of course is to stretch, which requires you to relax your muscles, not tense them; but when it’s painful, I think we naturally tense up…how self defeating. It's as if your body is going in two directions at once, part of you has decided to move forward with your intended position while the rest of you is digging its heals into the ground in utter protest.

But if you’re lucky enough to realize you are in fact “resisting the pose” as they say, then you have a chance to correct it by breathing deeply and “relaxing into it.” What follows is almost always a much deeper stretch than you previously thought yourself capable and it turns out to be less painful than when you were resisting.

This week, I’ve undergone the exhausting task of packing up my entire life in Washington. That meant quitting my job, ending my lease, saying my goodbyes, purging 90% of my belongings and then mailing the rest to Elgin, Texas.

Somewhere in the week I began to loathe the three flights of stairs at my house. And when it finally came time to load the car for UPS, I was so exhausted I called my father just to complain.

I had agonized over the logistics of this move for way longer than necessary, and had decided that flying myself and shipping my things was the best way. But I moaned to my dad that I should’ve done it all differently.

In all his kindness and wisdom he said, “well…ya just gotta do it; ya can’t change horses in mid-stream.”

How is he so good at accepting life on life’s terms whereas I completely resist any unpleasant position? Essentially he was telling me the same thing as the yoga teachers, “You can go further, just stop resisting and breathe into it….”