Oh. K.
Wow, I am bowled over by volume and variety of responses to my midday post-practice whine break. Lots of perspectives offered, and none of them mean or judgemental, which might be attributable to the fact that I have turned off anonymous commenting. Behind the veil of anonymity, people will say things that they would never ordinarily want to be heard (read) saying. Faced with accountability, people will censor themselves. Interesting that the consciences/superego/yamas/call-it-what-you-will carries not nearly as much power as the desire to be perceived in a certain light. When it comes to shaping behavior, the externals seem to be far more weighty than the internals.
Anyway, my favorite comment is from Karen, who suggested that I just enjoy Supta Kurmasana for a while. Why not, right? I mean, I have been longing to feel it for so long. Now, I have my wish. It stung to read it. The truth hurts. It's like, wow, what's gotten into me anyway? Why am I being so graspy? So desperate to add more to my repertoire?
I have to say that I have been struggling in the past few days. Not with the physical practice. That's been great. But with motivation. And desire to practice. This happens to me every time I finally "get" a pose. It happened after I finally bound by myself in Marichyasana C. Same with Mari D. To a lesser extent, it happened after I got and then "got" Bujapidasana. It's like the same thing that happens when you really are attracted to someone and you really want them to like you, and then when you finally catch their interest, it's like, eh, who cares, and what was all the fuss about? Or when you desperately, desperately want that new job, and then you actually get hired, and suddenly, you're like, oh, shit, it's like, just a job.
It's why I stopped running the marathon. The first time, I did it to finish. The second time, I did it to break four hours. The third time, I did it to....um....wait, now why did I do it again? As I crossed the Queensboro Bridge (somewhere around Mile 15 out of a total of 26.2), I remember feeling my quads tightening up, and thinking, what if I just walked home from here (I lived at Mile 17 at the time)? What difference would it make? I'm never going to win this thing. And with the way my quads feel, I'm never going to beat my last year's time, although I was still very much on track to do so. The best I could do would be to qualify for the Boston Marathon, and what exactly would that do for me? Cause me to run another 26.2 miles. And that's when my pace slowed from 8:20 all the way to somewhere around 9 minutes per mile. When I got the the last five miles, I knew that if I wanted to beat my previous year's time, I was going to have to run harder. Except I just didn't care anymore. I ended up finishing two minutes slower than the year before. And I never had any desire to ever run it again.
I don't want that to happen with the yoga. I want to revel in the absolute pointlessness of it, the practicicing for no performance, the endless, Sisyphean journey.
It's very hard.
YC
