For about a year or so, I’ve been switching my exercise routines so that every other day I’m doing something different, for about thirty minutes at a time. On Monday, I’ll run. On Tuesday, I’ll yoga. On Wednesday, I’ll run. Often, I’ll take off the weekend entirely, since my active daughter is a workout herself. This translates to two or three yoga sessions a week.
I decided because I do yoga so often, and because I still can’t master certain poses, I must be bad at them. I must not be flexible enough. I’ve been practicing yoga since 2007! How come I’m still so bad at flat-footed squats, when the instructors I follow on my app can do them so easily?!
That’s final, I decided. I will never be very good at yoga.
Last Monday we got about eight inches of snow, and the weather stayed below freezing all week, so the snow, and later ice, did not melt. This cramped my ability to run, because my normal paths are ice-caked death traps. I had no choice but to keep my workout routines indoors. As a bonus, Nola was interested in doing it with me, and she’s got the self-discipline and patience to work through a whole thirty-minute yoga session without declaring herself bored.
I made a goal beginning on January fifth to practice yoga, at least twenty minutes per session, for thirty days in a row. Once I could run again, I would add this in, but the yoga would remain the same.
Guess what.
It’s January eleventh. I’ve committed to yoga each day for six days, and this morning I fell easily into a squat.
Six days. Twenty or thirty minutes a day. Suddenly, I am not bad at yoga. I am not inflexible. I just needed to practice the craft steadily and persistently.
Practice the craft, steadily and persistently. Don’t squat in the conclusions you’ve made about yourself, but practice the craft, steadily and persistently.