While we aim to practice regularly – be it yoga asana, meditation, pranayama, journaling, any form of physical / mental discipline that helps us. But life happens and we end up staying away from the practice for long periods of time. Personally, I feel very incomplete, mentally agitated and physically lethargic if I go without my practice for more than 2 days. But there had been trying times that had me go weeks and sometime months without practice. Below are some of the things that helped me
- To stay sane when I couldn’t practice
- Get back on to my practice after an extended hiatus
A. Focusing on the breath: When physical movement became impossible or when I couldn’t carve out time or was so exhausted that I had no motivation to move, the one thing that helped me was to just lie down and watch my breath for a few minutes. I do this just before sleeping, comfortably lying on my back and drift into a peaceful sleep.
B. Not tripping on guilt: It is easy to get into the rut of beating oneself up and indulging in negative self talk when we end up missing our practice. This serves no purpose. A practice is a source of joy, not guilt. Trying to remember the joy that we felt while practicing and looking forward to recreating that feeling instead of beating oneself up goes a long way in holding the peace.
C. Looking at the big picture: We are much bigger than our practice. Our life is so much more bigger than the practice. The practice serves us to make our life easier. While it is important to prioritize the practice, it is also equally important to not become a slave to it.
D. Re-start in a small way: After a month of not practicing, when I finally felt motivated to roll out my mat, all that my body wanted to do was curl up in pavan muktasana (lying down on the back and hugging the knees to chest) and relax my back. Probably a few supine twists from there and that was all that my body and mind wanted to do. But just doing that helped me slowly build back my practice. Not pushing and listening to the body helped. Again, remember – the practice is here to serve you and not the other way round!
While we may plan and schedule, life has its own way of unfolding. It is so much easier to just go with the flow and live every moment as it comes. Practice is just a part of this beautiful canvas of our life that adds beauty to the whole picture. Doing what we can TODAY goes a long way in having a steady and satisfying practice.
Om 🙂