A.k.a why military life is just like a downward dog sometimesÂ
I do yoga. Occasionally. When I am not crying into a pint of ice cream (my standard ritual on day 1 after Man leaves) or binge-watching an entire season of Good Girls on Netflix (these activities go perfectly well together by the way). Despite having done yoga for a fair few years, I am still as graceful as a drunk baby deer and as inflexible as a wooden pole. The other day in class, whilst trying to hold a standing split – which in my case more aptly resembled an elephant having a stroke – I realised that this inflexibility on the mat has a lot of similarities with my inflexibility in life. Military life to be exact. The struggle in the yoga room teaches me that the more I resent my inflexibility and resist the changes beyond my control, the harder the experience is.
In Yin Yoga (totally my cup of tea: lots of snoozing on the ground) we speak about ‘coming to the first edge’. In other words: go only as deep into the pose as to where you first feel the discomfort. Don’t push. Don’t demand change. Just accept the pose, your body and your thoughts as they come. Quite the challenge, because whilst holding a downward dog – or my version of it: the handicapped puppy© – with no other distractions, many worries and questions come up: when is the next training and how long will he be gone for? Will he get deployed next year? How will I cope without him? Will I love the empty house / ‘open door bathroom time’, or at least get used to it? Will I find the courage to keep up my social life and exercise, or morph into the couch and drown in his big fluffy bathrobe? How is it that this bathrobe still smells so beautifully of him even after he’s been gone for a month? Do I still have wine in the fridge? Is the new season of OITNB out yet?
Where will my first edge be? But more importantly: will I have the ease, patience and grace to not push beyond this first edge? In yoga we also speak of the balance between ‘sthira’ and ‘sukha’: effort and ease. Finding that balance in military life is hard. On the one hand there is the effort of having to push, to keep going even when it is hard, to make sacrifices in terms of career, friends, family and more. Effort to keep going and get out of bed, even on the hardest days. Effort to accept the military potentially posting us to that boring, icy cold city that I really don’t want to live in.
On the other hand there is the ease which comes in the form of self-love, self-sufficiency, self-care and all of the other wonderfully positive ‘selfs’. When I push too hard, beyond the first edge, that balance is gone. Simultaneously, when I ease off too much and lose perseverance the balance is gone too. So I remind myself to settle into the pose, as I have a feeling that I’m going to be here for a while… Over time it might get easier. Hell, my handicapped puppy might even transform into a semi-decent labrador (with icecream-cry-related-puppy-fat included).
Namaste!