A few months ago, I was talking to my sister and, not surprisingly, the conversation turned to yoga. According to my awful memory, the conversation went a little something like this:

Me: I found this great yoga podcast I can’t wait to try. I think you’d really like it.

Sis: That’s great. A new yoga studio opened up nearby that I can’t wait to get to.

Me: Nice! Have you been doing much yoga lately?

Sis: [pause] I unrolled my mat. Does that count?

Me: That counts if all the podcasts I’ve downloaded but not watched count too!

Sis: Deal!

The point is, we both love yoga. We both get excited about it. We think about it a lot, searching for the latest and greatest studio/video/podcast/mat/etc. And yet, as with so many things in life, my practice doesn’t quite stack up to my intention. (My sister, to her credit, is much better about maintaining a physically active lifestyle than I am.) Sometimes I don’t even want to pull out my mat, and other times I’ll start a practice, and find that after 20 or 25 minutes, I just want to stop.

Curiously, while this happens often in my home practice, when I went to studio classes, I (almost) never wanted to quit early. I think a big reason is that when I’m alone, my mind tends to run off and think decidedly un-yogini thoughts. Let’s take today, for example. In the course of 25 minutes (of a 50 minute podcast–whoops), my thoughts went a little something like this:

Woohoo! My downward dog is getting much better–I can almost drop my heels to the floor! Dammit, if I practiced as much as I thought about it, my downdog would be awesome by now.  Stop thinking like that. Focus on your breath. I can’t believe how much stronger I feel in dandasana. This is great. I can’t believe I can almost grab the bottoms of my feet doing this! Yeah, but it really is too bad that my thighs are still flabby. You’d think with how I’ve been eating lately…stop it! Good thoughts! You’re so much healthier! True, but… No ‘buts’! BREATHE!

So I stopped. I’ve been fighting a cold and have had a headache for three days, so I really didn’t want to push it. What I’m really having trouble with, though, is telling the difference between a “good push” beyond my comfort zone, and a “bad push” that could leave me run down or injured. If I’m honest with myself, more often than not, I wimp out long before the good push limits.

Which is why I’m grateful. My poetry mentor often talks about taking the thing that’s most problematic in a poem and finding a way to make it the core of the poem. Don’t know why the narrator of the poem is in the church? Make the not knowing what the poem is all about, and be willing to explore that truth through the writing. Isn’t that what yoga is? This difficulty I have balancing pushing myself and honoring myself is at the core not only of when and how much to practice, but in how I move in and out of each pose. Not quite sure how that will manifest itself yet, but now that that idea has clicked, I at least have something to work with.

How do you balance pushing yourself with honoring your limits? How do you keep going in your practice when you’re frustrated?

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’ve been working on a bit of a poetry project here with a colleague. This is one of those things that came together rather magically, and I didn’t even know how much I wanted it until it happened. I’d put it on my vision board sort of by fluke (saw the word “poetry” in magazines I was ripping up, and pulled it), and it seems to have stirred something.

I’d been lamenting my need for a creative outlet. I bought needlepoint supplies (oh, how my grandmother would be proud) because it’s a nice portable craft, but my embroidery hoop broke in the mail. One night Michael looked over and said, rather out of the blue, that he thought I should try my hand writing poetry. And around the same time, I became friends with my incredibly talented, award-winning, and generous colleague, R. After a few too many glasses of wine, I mentioned to R. what Michael had said, and R. offered to help me with it.

Now, for about two hours every Thursday afternoon, R. and I meet to discuss my work. It is a humbling experience! Three weeks in, I have produced exactly one stanza worth keeping–and that was a compilation of lines by other poets, reassembled in a new way (which, I learned, is called a cento). This poetry writing business is hard, lemme tell you. And yet, it’s incredibly gratifying. Much like one of my other favorite practices. Hmmm.

Last Thursday, as I spent hours moving around and changing words, altering line lengths and verb tense, I couldn’t help but think that I had taken my yoga practice off of my mat and into the coffee shop. Both require regular devotion. Both require mindfulness and focus. Both serve as a form of meditation. And both make you stretch and twist as you try to do things you don’t think you can, yet keep attempting.

Clearly none of my own work is anywhere close to being ready for public consumption, but I will leave you with a transcription and (my slap-dash) translation of one of my all time favorite poems, by Jacques Prévert. (Believe it or not, I spent ages on formatting that all pretty, but it didn’t come through. I give up.)

Déjeuner du matin (Breakfast)

Il a mis le café                                                 He put his coffee
Dans la tasse                                                   In the cup
Il a mis le lait                                                   He put the milk
Dans la tasse de café                                      In the cup of coffee
Il a mis le sucre                                               He put the sugar
Dans le café au lait                                         In the café au lait
Avec la petite cuiller                                       With a little spoon
Il a tourné                                                         He stirred
Il a bu le café au lait                                        He sipped the café au lait
Et il a reposé la tasse                                       And he put down his cup
Sans me parler                                                 Without talking to me

Il a allumé                                                          He lit
Une cigarette                                                      A cigarette
Il a fait des ronds                                              He made rounds
Avec la fumée                                                   With the smoke
Il a mis les cendres                                           He put the ashes
Dans le cendrier                                               In the ashtray
Sans me parler                                                 Without talking to me
Sans me regarder                                             Without looking at me

Il s’est levé                                                        He got up
Il a mis                                                              He put
Son chapeau sur sa tête                                 His hat on his head
Il a mis son manteau de pluie                       He put on his raincoat
Parce qu’il pleuvait                                          Because it was raining
Et il est parti                                                      And he left
Sous la pluie                                                      In the rain
Sans une parole                                                 Without a word
Sans me regarder                                              Without looking at me

Et moi j’ai pris                                                 And me I took
Ma tête dans ma main                                   My head in my hand
Et j’ai pleuré                                                     And I cried

(Picture quality compromised due to hideous curtains, lack of space, and difficulty of actually holding a book while doing yoga. But I think they’re fun anyway. )

What other practices has your yoga found its way into?

• Finish reading all the books I’m “currently reading.” If it weren’t for GoodReads, I don’t know how I’d even keep track.
• Do yoga five days a week for 6 months. “Doing yoga” can mean as little as 15 minutes of quality time with my mat. It’s habit and practice that count most. If I do this, then I can start actually thinking about looking into teacher training programs, something that’s interested me for a very long time.
• Stay off sugar, and give up the friggin’ dairy already. I had cheese today. Delicious, creamy Brie cheese that is almost impossible to find in Korea. As a consequence, I have had a nasty headache and grumpy stomach for the past few hours.
• Spend time every day with poems. This can mean thoughtfully reading one author (or one theme), or, ideally, spending time on some work of my own.
• Get cracking on my grad school time line. I have my list of schools. I need to draft my personal statement and develop a reading list for my sample scholarship.
• Learn more about how to live a high vegan lifestyle. Clearly, the cheese is a struggle, but I’m also just not ready to give up sushi and shrimp. I’ve made so many big changes to my diet for the better in the last year, I’m content to hang out in this funny pescatarian stage for quite a while, but the closer to vegan I can get, the better. Any tips from my vegan readers about how to break the cheese habit?

There you have it. As always, I’d love any advice on how to make these goals a reality, and would be curious to hear what you’re working to these days.

I loosely divided it into four sectors, with a nice big “Double Happiness” in the middle–because really, that’s what it’s all about, no? The upper left corner is all about my new-found rediscovered passion for green living. When I was in elementary school, 50 Simple Things Kids Can Do to Save the Earth was one of my absolute favorite books. As I got older, I defaulted to green living…when it was convenient. But in the past year or so, I have felt a new sense of urgency when it comes to our planet, and dream of having the greenest home we can.

Contradictory as it may seem, the next corner is all about travel. Given the title and original intention of this blog, this can’t be any surprise. Some of these destinations (those in Asia) are planned for spring of 2011, but the others are a bit up in the air. Seeing the names of places I dream of visiting each day certainly inspires me to find a way to make it happen. And that camera there is my dream purchase so I can play with photography, which I love, and capture my travels.

The upper right corner is focused mostly on health. “Beautiful Back” is my vanity goal. I’m a sucker for backless dresses and halter tops, and I want a strong, toned back when I wear them. Some goals are food related, some sleep, some yoga, some my relationships and spirituality. All pretty straightforward, I think.

Finally, the lower right corner is a bit of a “catch all” category. It speaks to my desire to spend more time in nature, get a puppy or two when we’re settled somewhere, spend more time with poetry and art, and to apply and get accepted to a program for my masters in literature (more on that later).

I realized later that I neglected to add a few things, but had already taken out the recycling and filled up my board. Somehow, I’ll have to find room for these intentions: patience, vegetable garden, head stand, 10 push ups, $0 debt, sunrises, fireplace, Istanbul, Morocco. Most of them are details or expansions or tangents to other items already on the board, but specificity is key, is it not?

Have created a vision board? Do you have plans to? Please share links and experiences in the comments!

*Can you tell I couldn’t come up with a clever title?