The Practice | Even Yogis Get the Blues

Today's been a hard day.

Maybe it's Mercury retrograde, or exhaustion, or stress, or just because. But it's been hard.

I've engaged in multiple negative interactions with others. I've been angry. I've felt like crying. I've felt like hiding. I've felt like skipping my yoga practice.

Even yogis get the blues.

And this is okay. In fact, it's just totally normal. It's a part of the whole human thing. Sometimes I have to remind myself of just how okay it is to not feel okay, because there's been a sort of imbalance developing in the mainstream yoga culture. A sometimes unrealistic emphasis is placed on phrases like "love and light," and "good vibes only."

While I understand the good intentions behind such ideas, I often feel that it's disengenuous to promote the practice of yoga as a feel-good fix-all. Because the truth about yoga is that it doesn't always feel "good," and it doesn't fix everything.

More accurately, yoga is a healing tool, but the path to healing can require bravely diving into the very pain you are trying to heal, whether physical or emotional. Often, this doesn't actually feel good, and we'd rather avoid it all together.

Like me, today.

What I really want to do is hide under the covers for the rest of the day and cross my fingers that I wake up tomorrow and everything is better.

It could happen, and it would be okay if it did.

But.

I understand that everything doesn't have to be perfect--not my body, not my heart, not my life--in order for me to practice yoga. In fact, the most perfect time to unroll my mat and take time to move and breathe is exactly when everything feels the messiest and most stuck.

So I'm not going to hide from my shadows today. I am going to arrive, take a moment to compose myself, and then dive right into the shadows. I know there's some light in there somewhere.

Photo by Ali Hartwig