30 Days of Yoga - Trust

January 3rd 2018

Hello! I'm here at my laptop, with my peppermint tea, in all my pyjama'd glory to write about Day Two of my 30-day yoga challenge! I am fresh from supervising a clever, procrastinating six-year-old wiping his bottom and I am now ready to spend a bit of time reflecting on my own with peace and quiet and most of all - no children.

Well, Big Lad's in the next room reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid but we'll just have to trust that holds his attention.

And speaking of trust, that was the theme of today's yoga session with Adriene Mishler on You Tube. I knew the theme already thanks to the free calendar I'd been sent when I signed up for the programme. I'd been up for it, wondering what it could be about, and less skeptical about it than I was about some of other themes on the calendar:

- Kindle (sure to involve some unnecessary burning of tummy muscles)

- Charisma (really? Have you seem my downward facing dog?)

- Finesse (see above)

So I got up before the Lads and got that telly on before they could swan in and own it for the rest of the day.

Imagine my surprise when the telly flashed to life with a shouty shopping channel (does anybody else's telly do this first thing in the morning? It is a true mystery to me) and before I could find Adriene in the land of You Tube, I was confronted with a piece of fitness apparatus called 'Squat Magic'. And not just that, but various very trim looking ladies jumping up and down on it as if their lives depended on it. Sorry, no, not jumping, squatting. Properly squatting up and down over and over with their tiny pink hot pants and their painted smiles atop a kind of chunky looking pogo stick type thingy. Honestly.

And I'm not gonna lie. I was nearly drawn in by the tight arse cheeks parading across the screen in front of me, the toned thighs, the bronzed legs, the utter glee that these women seemed to have when pumping up and down on these magical, miracle-making gadgets. Who wouldn't want a Squat Magic in their life?

Adriene Mishler, that's who.

So I got with the programme and found that video on Trust.

I really enjoyed today's session. After meditating yesterday on my motives for doing the programme in the first place, Trust was a nice place to come to and reside in. Adriene encouraged me to trust myself, trust the video and trust her voice as a guide. All things I've heard her say before in previous videos that have helped to ease me into the process and feel safe and held during my yoga practice. But then she said something I haven't heard her say before: 'Trust the yoga'. And it became a kind of mantra she came back to throughout the session - trust the yoga.

I realised, while I was holding my half-arsed attempt at a plank and then curling up to an awkward cobra, that this is something I've always done. Ever since an old and weirdly cool bearded hippy bloke introduced me to yoga about eighteen years ago, in a freezing cold community centre on a well dodgy housing estate, I have totally trusted the yoga.

I can't give you any reason for this. All I know is that yoga is the one form of exercise I have come back and back to despite all the challenges of life. Heartbreaks, house moves, career changes, exams, illnesses, falling in and out of love, births, deaths, miscarriages - all of these things have, for me, been supported by yoga. I used to be a total gym bunny, I was once a Zumba addict, and I have dabbled in daily swimming . . . but yoga has always been there, like a faithful old chum, smiling knowingly in the corner, believing I will come back to it eventually.

And I have. I am. Because there I was this morning, on my raggy old mat, the rain stroking the window, the incense smoke curling toward the ceiling, the room quiet and warm, and I was there in my pyjamas, giving Peaceful Warrior pose a go for all I was worth. And rather than put my trust in a piece of over-priced, ridiculous-looking piece of equipment like Squat Magic, I'd rather trust the yoga.

That's where the real magic is.

Go well,

Abi

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#YWATRUE