Creativity Break Break (or why I'm not on Day 10 like I should be)

This will not be a three-sentence post like the other Creativity Break posts.

I cannot believe I already couldn't maintain a daily practice past a week. If I'm honest, I didn't even get past the full week. I counted movement on Day 8 that is part of my normal day as my practice because I did a bit more of it. Yeah, no.

Let me give you an idea of what my days look like, movement-wise, and how it's easy to think I've practiced when I really haven't:

• We do not have a fenced yard so there are multiple dog walks a day and I do two or three of them (probably 2 - 3 miles a day). I walk in grass where I can, and search out any hills I can find to make sure I move more ways while I walk.
• I don't practice yoga while I teach, but I'm demonstrating here and there, on my feet in close observation of my students.
• Ten to fifteen hours a week, I work at a desk in an office. While I'm there, I'm up and about often. I make a point to sit on the floor, hang off doorways, and otherwise break up all that sitting as much as possible.
• I sit behind a steering wheel, commuting to and from teaching, clients, a part-time job (three days a week), picking up my daughter from her school. This can total as much as 65 - 75 miles given the day.
• Throughout the day, I roll my feet on a ball, I stretch my calves, I squat (or as close to it as I can), I reach up high, I go up and down stairs, I work in the yard (seasonally), I move my fingers and toes, I sit on the floor and get back up.

I am increasingly teaching about all those ways in which movement throughout the day matters as much if not MORE than a specified period of daily exercise with the remainder spent sitting at a desk or behind the wheel or on the couch. I believe in the vital importance of moving more of your parts in more ways throughout more of the day. And in that respect, I practice what I preach. 

So why do I want so badly to get back on my mat?

Getting on the mat is physical work. It's a chance to really inhabit this body that I've spent a lifetime moving. I've moved onstage and in private. I've moved to tell stories and to teach others. I feel intelligent in my body. I feel graceful. I feel powerful. 

I learn on the mat and through my body. Getting on the mat has given me insight into injuries (ankle, pelvis, shoulder) and helped me heal them. Getting on the mat can be playful or challenging or calming. It is inward work. 

I spent my first three decades sweating in dance classes and exercise classes. Movement up until then had either been performance or otherwise externally driven. I got serious about yoga in my late 20s and immediately understood its therapeutic benefits. When running hurt my knees, I got on my mat and figured out at least one of the problems. In my mid-40s, I ran a 10K with my sights set on a half-marathon. The damage to my ankle joint over decades of dance injuries barely survived that 10K. It took the next four years of slow, diligent work on the mat to unwind my movement patterns and re-train my leg, ankle, foot so that I could walk without pain again. Only after all that effort on the mat could I know that running or skipping wouldn't hurt my joints (though I have not tried to run a mile even still).

I've spent the past four years using my body knowledge on the mat again, this time to recover from a frozen shoulder. I still don't have full range of motion. And I'm again in the process of unwinding the habits of decades to relearn how to use an even more complicated joint.

I have all this experience of utilizing my yoga and body knowledge for my own betterment. I used to inspire my personal practice by studying with my teachers (one now deceased, one far away) and colleagues (all far away since I moved). I used to have a set time of day. I used to have local peers, students who didn't need me to guide them but appreciated sharing space while we all practiced.

But now?

• Without my teachers and colleagues handy, I don't want to practice in another class. I am not a general student with general needs. I'm a specific student with very specific injuries, limitations, and two decades of experience teaching.
• When the kids were little, I used to practice at 5:00 am every morning.  After we got a dog, and I had to walk her early in the morning, I had a few years of practicing at 2:00 pm before children came home from school. Now, with early commutes to my daughter's school (and no, she can't take the bus; the school is 13 miles away, out of district, and she doesn't drive) and a schedule that is so widely varying, I barely know where I am on any given day. There is no one time that works everyday, unless I get up at 4:00 am, which I am not willing to do.

I'm starting to wonder if all my (necessary) therapeutic use of yoga has removed play and fun from getting on the mat. I don't have peers to practice with here, which I had before I moved to MN. In Michigan, colleagues and students and I would get together and practice individually in the same space. Maybe I have to create that somehow here. It wouldn't be daily, but it might be enough to motivate me to do it on my own between times.

Just sitting with this today, sitting with my unwillingness, digging through why I have and have not practiced during periods of my life, makes it clear that it isn't outer accountability I need. Even declaring a 40-day commitment publicly didn't do it. I lied to myself and to the public by Day 8. 

The motivation is going to have to come from me.

I have looked at my calendar. Rather than writing "Practice" on each day, I carefully chose specific times each weekday and wrote the actual time down. An appointment with myself. Some appointments are 30 minutes, some 45, some 20. I tell my students, it doesn't need to be 90 minutes to be a practice. Time to listen to my own teaching.

I do not know if this will work any better than what I've been doing. But I am done with my rebellious, "I won't" attitude.

I keep thinking of something a friend shared with me. "Paint until you feel like painting."

Yep. I'm going to practice until I feel like practicing.

Getting refocused with the Creativity Break. Day 1.



[And in case you read the first day of the Creativity Break, here is a photo of the broken Sarasvati that gave me the impulse to do this in the first place.]