Intention

Hi Friends.

Here we are, deeply into winter. My body wants to do little past sleep, nest, cook, read, stitch, watch movies, maybe write a little — all the while always sipping hot liquids to warm myself from the inside. Today’s high temperature is 30 degrees.

But I’ve made myself re-commit to yoga this year as not only part of a deepening spiritual gnawing, but as part of a plan to take better care of myself. And to really do it, not just say I’m doing it, to consciously choose to take an hour of my day for the health of my body and mind instead of giving it away to other things that probably won’t do me nearly as much good.

So there I was on the mat this morning, dutifully going about my app-led practice and feeling good. My body has surprising muscle memory — it’s been almost five years since I walked away from a five-to-six class per week practice — I thought it would be much more reluctant to bend than it has been since I decided it was time for it to do that again. But as I pushed myself to go deeper into a forward bend, a thought that I’ve been wrestling with, and the one that caused me to walk away from my practice in the first place, tapped on my brain’s door: Why do you want to go deeper into this forward bend?

Ego? Vanity? A sense of accomplishment? A need to always be progressing no matter what the progression asks of me? What is the reward?

And then I laughed at myself and held the bend where I was. I decided to try to be grateful for the amount I’d already done and think about the question that had risen before I pushed myself forward again.

Could the theme of 2022 be intentionality? Many things we do in life are done because they are instinctual, or because we need to do them to survive. But I know that not everything I push myself to do has a real point except that it keeps me in motion. I think a lot of us stay in motion just because we’re told we’re supposed to be in it. The devil makes work for idle hands… That sort of lets us off the hook, doesn’t it? And busyness is next to g-dliness then. Nah, I don’t like these philosophies.

So, I’m questioning all of that noise. I’m asking why and not settling for the answers that fall under the heading of this is what I’ve always done. I don’t think I’m at all part of this great resignation I’m hearing about, I think I just don’t want to miss my life by doing things by rote and without knowing why I’m doing them. That’s all.

It’s always a good time for questions, don’t you think?

Sending love everywhere,

AM

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