Why I’ll Never Be a Yogi – or – Who Needs the Brain/Mind Dichotomy? They Both Annoy Me!

UPDATE: I’m feeling much better now about all of this, but I’m going to leave the post as a reminder that I’ve been here before!

So, as you can probably tell from the title, I’m feeling a bit annoyed right now.  I just finished an at-home yoga practice and it was not all I had hoped it would be.  I’m frustrated with my recent inability to get in a good home practice – which really seems necessary if I’m going to progress, because I can get to  the studios 4x per week max right now.   There are two different problems that cropped up in this practice – one related to mind and one to body – that I want to be able to control, even though I know that the only way around them (really) is to let go of that control.

First, the mind – I drug my stuff to the basement for this practice to get away from the family, thinking it would encourage mindful and attentive practice.  Apparently, that was not the best selection.  I just could not seem to stay on the mat.  I pondered the cardboard boxes that are all over the room from unpacking furniture (Why did they leave them there? When should we take them to the curb? Why is there so much waste in packaging?).  I worried about what the two pets that came to “visit” my practice were doing  (Is Charlie scratching the carpet?  Is Charlie eating that plastic? What is Charlie doing under the box? Oh, look, Luna is rubbing her eye on the carpet – that can’t be good.  Did Luna just jump on the new couch? She’s going to get hair everywhere.).  I thought about what I needed to do tonight and what I was going to make for dinner.  I even pondered a work call that I had this afternoon.  Time and time again, I told myself to come back to the mat, but to no avail.

Then there was the body – Today’s practice made me feel a little bit like I’ve actually been losing ground.  After what felt like a long time (from my body), I glanced at the clock and realized it had been barely 35 minutes.  The energy just seemed to be missing.  Poses that I normally love, even as they challenge me, just felt counter-intuitive and wrong.  I had to kick up several times to get into Pincha Mayurasana, and then when I got there, about 10 seconds in I realized that I was panting and my heart was beating like a snare drum and had to come back down.  Headstand was better, but not by much.  I managed to stub the crud out of my toe practicing forward/back jumps (which I’m never good at) and scraped all the skin from my elbows doing yoga in a scratchy long sleeved cotton shirt.  It was all just silly.  I want my body to “cooperate.”

I know, really, I know.  This is not a yoga way of judging myself.  Clearly, I’m a long way from being a yogi.  : /   So, tell me about the walls you have hit in your yoga practice, or meditation, or running/swimming/whatever and what you did to get past them.