yoga
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04822
This morning – for the first time since I began my yoga journey four plus years ago – hubs came to class. He was (at times!) annoyingly good for his first class. I think (hope!) he liked it.
After class I settled into my office to plug away at my open ended list of to-dos and pulled up my teacher training ( I have fallen woefully behind the arbitrary schedule I set for myself but ce la vie, right?). One of the first questions listed to answer was “What do you love about yoga?”
Which strangely, stumped me.
What do I love about yoga? Besides everything, right? Because I can’t seem to get around the fact that I love everything about yoga. I love the breath and I love the sweat. I love the community. I love the poses, the challenges. I love the heat, the thick humidity. I love how sometimes it’s so hard, my brain empties of everything except that exact moment, that exact pose and the sweat dripping off my nose. I love the philosophy and the thoughtfulness. I love the hard questions and the boundaries yoga pushes. I love all eight of it’s glorious limbs, the yamas and the niyamas and the pranayama. I love that yoga expects nothing of me in return and yet, it expects everything. It accepts everything. I love its deep and rich history. I love it all.
So I guess that’s my answer. It doesn’t help me come up with my mission statement or whatever its called – my purpose. But I know in the marrow of my bones that I love yoga indescribably, indiscriminately, wholly and fully.
I hope husby does one day, too.
Xoxo, g
30322
Getting really sick felt a little like sliding slowly beneath the surface of the water. Not flailing or panicked, just sinking slowly, unable to move or help myself at all.
My head slipped below the surface and it felt like forever before I began making my way toward the light again.
I don’t feel one hundred percent, but I don’t know if that’s even an option any more – age, multiple sclerosis … life. Too many factors making it tough going. The pain in my hip screams, protests, and I keep pushing forward, blindly ignoring my body’s cues.
I wonder if this is how it always is – good intentions, starting off strong and then somewhere along the line losing my way completely. Exhaustion, pain, disappointment. It piles up until trying to keep going feels fruitless. What even is the point?
But – life is the point, right? We aren’t guaranteed anything after this. No one has come back to let us know what to anticipate. Either it’s really great, really bad or there isn’t anything at all. So this life – MS and hip pain and discouragement and failure – that’s the gig. Take it, leave it, but you only get one.
I’m trying to rev up my engine after weeks of drowning. Find my rhythm again, find my motivation. Remember all the promises I made in January, when the whole year lay ahead, unlived and full of potential.
We have trips planned and accommodations booked & paid for and we keep trying valiantly to make the most adult decisions we can. We paid off the new truck (I named him Monty but John’s less on board than he was for Bucky). We paid off our debt. We have two homes. We have savings. I need to talk to our financial advisor, I need to make vet appointments for Lucy. Most immediately I need to cook dinner tonight. It never stops – the responsibilities, the slipping by of minutes and hours and days. Routines and adventures, surprises and sharp, unexpected left turns.
I’m still determined to finish YTT before leaving for the U.K. in May. I’m determined to get my health back on track. I’m determined …. I suppose that’s the first good sign.
xox, g
11322
There is something truly glorious about sitting down, freshly showered, to sip a hot chai and do some reading and writing. It feels indulgent but also so inherently perfect. The weather today is pretty gorgeous – mid-50s and sunny. Lucy could have spent all day sniffing tufts of grass on our walk.
Chai is one of my favorite parts of any day. It is happiness in a cup. I savor it, feel the tension relax in my shoulders and allow my taste buds to relish the glory that is a soy chai latte from Starbucks. Whether it’s a good day (like today) or a not-so-good day (like the past few) chai always makes it just a smidge better.
I’m finding that my weeks are usually a roller coaster of good and bad days … and I’m not sure what I’m going to get every morning when I wake up. I hope I’ll feel good, but it’s not guaranteed. Having little moments to look forward to – chai tea lattes being at the top of the list – helps me get through the really tough days.
Two days ago I went to urgent care because the skin on my forehead just wasn’t … normal. It wasn’t a break out and I couldn’t crack it. Having something on your face is disorienting because even though it might not seem like much to other people, it’s huge to you and it just crumbled my self confidence. I could feel the downward spiral, the lack of motivation, the deep dark frustration and powerlessness. And even after the doctor and medicine and calamine lotion it still didn’t’ seem to be diminishing and that further sent me into a tailspin.
Anyway, I went to yoga this morning with a forehead bathed in calamine lotion (poison ivy being the prime suspect for my rash) and I felt a million times better for it. Now I can settle into my teacher training, more calamine lotion drying quietly as I sip tea, do some French lessons and finally focus in on the history of yoga. Husby says despite my paranoia, the rash is looking much better. So, that’s a good thing.
Xox, g
09322
Two years ago …
Kind of an ominous start considering that nearly two years ago exactly the Covid pandemic began with school closures and business closures and quarantining and red, yellow and green zones. Two years. So much has happened. So much has changed.
Also, two years ago I began my yoga teacher training journey. I knew it was something I wanted to do, so when my studio offered their first (and to this point only) teacher training I signed up. And I honestly hated it. It wasn’t anything I thought it would be. It made me resent yoga – which I think is probably not ever the intention. I decided that perhaps, teaching yoga wasn’t for me, and when isolation began I dropped out. I knew that my attitude certainly wasn’t very yogic and my presence wouldn’t have been fair to the other women focused on becoming teachers.
But even though I felt okay about my decision at the time, I kept coming back to the idea that I wanted to get certified. I felt it in my bones, as though it was the right thing for me to pursue. Maybe I just needed a little bit of time to figure out my true ‘why’ … I don’t know.
But here I am, March 2022, beginning yoga teacher training again. And it is SO DIFFERENT than the first time. To begin, it’s online (possibly not a strength for me but hopefully not a deal breaker either). But it’s also not solely focused on the Baptiste method (which is the type of yoga I regularly practice and love, but didn’t speak to me during my first training). This course is rich with yogic history and Sanskrit and all the things I wanted to learn the first time around but … didn’t. I have cautiously optimistic high hopes that this training will be the beginning of my next phase of yoga. And I’m nervous and excited and a little scared.
Which I’m very sure is a good thing.
Xox, g
23222
Something that makes me sad — limited release Kombucha flavors from Wegmans that I can never find again.
Okay, that’s my random thought for this blog post. But this pomegranate orange is delicious and I’m so sad I won’t be able to find it again. Insert sad face emoji. 🥲
Yoga today was dreamy. Super hot and humid and sweaty but practically perfect in every other way. No fallen triangles or flipped dogs (poses that plague my wrists) and a class full of familiar faces. Wednesday’s classes are taught by my favorite teacher – I absolutely love her so deeply there aren’t adequate words. All the teachers at the studio are excellent and the community is what keeps me afloat when I feel like I am drowning, but Sara is my yoga North Star. She empowers and encourages and keeps everything so grounded and real.
I’ve always loved yoga – since the early days of Ryah in Conshohocken, but recently I’ve settled into the fact that yoga and Be & Breathe have given my life the shape that allows me to be the best version of me (always stumbling and falling but trying anyway … coming back again and again with an open heart and a mind that is so desperate to learn and question and push boundaries). Yoga has become the foundation and the framework.
Everything else is the icing … yoga is the cake.
Xox, g
23jan22
I went to a talk today about the gut+brain connection. It was hosted by a friend of mine at our mutual yoga studio (where she also teaches a movement class because she’s amazing and is a dance movement therapist and incredibly well-rounded). I am so glad that I went – on a Sunday afternoon, in January.
The talk ended with the idea of community and how a person’s community affects their microbiome and therefore their gut and their brain health. The entire talk was utterly fascinating but as I talked with my friends and made plans for lunch dates and breakfast dates, the importance of community was driven home.
Five years ago my community of people was very different than my community of people today. Some of that is due to circumstance – I stopped working and commuting into the city. Some of it was on purpose – me understanding my own worth and what I should be looking for in friends.
But it is incredibly interesting how my community has so significantly changed my life. In such a positive way.
Anyway. Surround yourself with the energy that makes you light up from the inside. Find the people who re-charge your battery. And then nurture and take care of those friendships. Because they are life.
Xox, g
21jan22
I got to yoga late this morning – not so late that I missed the start of class or anything, but late enough that I ended up front & center (literally). I don’t mind front but center always poses a problem. I usually use the wall when I begin tipping over and it absolutely helps me during balancing postures.
Today was Fun Friday Flow and as I said to Sue (our teacher) after class, her definition of fun is wildly different than mine! It was a challenging class partly because I had no idea what was coming and for my MS body, that’s a real challenge. But in its own weird way, practice was fun. Because I was fully present. I couldn’t not be. It was just me and my mat and sweat. For seventy-five minutes. And that was glorious.
Sue began by having us think of an intention, and I didn’t so much have that as I had a thought. Nine years. That’s what I kept thinking when I was wobbling or unsure. When I needed to center myself and come back to the basics. When things felt too hard, or impossible.
As of today, I’ve been diagnosed with MS for nine years, And I can still get on my mat and I can still practice. And some days are better than others but they are all better than those first two years of Lydia(my cane) and losing the ability to write and sliding helplessly down the slope of disability. I can walk and I can think and I can – if I’m disciplined – do more than one thing a day and survive.
I’m healthier than I ever was as an adult without an incurable neurological autoimmune disease. That’s a certainty. I eat better and drink better and sleep better and exercise better and think better than young, ‘healthy’ Gwyneth ever did. I’ve learned a lot in nine years. I’ve felt loss and I’ve felt despair, yes, but I’ve also felt joy and accomplishment.
MS is hard. It’s hard for many reasons, but a big one is that I don’t look like much of anything should be hard. I look like a healthy forty-something. And I am, but I’m also not. It’s weird and uncomfortable living with that juxtaposition.
But I’ve been doing it for nine years. Like I’ve been saying all day – wild.
Xoxo, g
Day 76
I think being an adult is recognizing the need to “do the things.”
A woman in class today confessed that it took effort to leave her comfortable chair, snuggling with her dog, to get herself to yoga today. A chorus around the room of other women, myself included, confessed they never regretted coming to class — that class itself was amazing — but getting there, especially on cold, grey days was the real challenge.
I know that even if I am tired and angry and frustrated and depressed the best thing for me to do is get dressed and get out of the house. I think that’s why Covid affected me in a such an insidious way. I am a loner, I am an introvert … but to stay balanced, I need to get out of the house. I need social interaction and routine. All that disappeared a year ago. And while it’s come back in fits and starts, it isn’t the same. There’s an underlying fear, there’s a wary gaze — politics and pandemics and civil rights have divided all of us and we don’t know who is “safe” anymore.
Even on my mat— socially distanced and wearing a mask— it doesn’t feel the same as class used to feel. It feels close, don’t get me wrong. But not the same.
I also know that to save myself, to keep myself from spiraling, it’s imperative that I get on my mat, that I sweat and wobble and struggle through class, breathing heavily through a sweat-soaked mask.
And that is adulting. It’s knowing that I could choose sadness and depression and sweatpants and junk food … and choosing something else instead. Something better for me.
Adulting is really effing hard sometimes.
Xox, g
Day 73
When John & I moved to Chester County nearly six years ago, we didn’t know anyone. Well, my parents, but that’s it. We had no friends down the street, we commuted to work and we lived in a little bubble of travel, our selves, Lucy and our house.
It’s funny how community builds when you aren’t even looking. Today, my yoga community and the broader community of people with autoimmune disorders rose up and illustrated to me —yet again — how important community can be. How important community is — full stop.
I’ve never lived in any one place for longer than six years. I hit that mark in the apartment — the first place John and I lived. And this July, I will surpass it when we hit the six year anniversary of moving into our first house. This house. Our home. In a place we chose because it just felt better whenever we were here. In a place where we have built community — with locals and business owners and outdoorsmen and yogis and other transplants. Where our community rises up and carries us when we need support.
When John and I chose each other we had very little else but ourselves to bring to the table. What we have we have earned together, we have built together. When I look around at my life, I feel blessed beyond measure in my partner, in our shared vision, our shared likes and values and hobbies and ways we see the world.
I feel blessed in the people who have become our support network — our friends and neighbors. To have built what we have built from nothing feels like a miracle. And I am so grateful for it.
Thank you Amy & Susanne. Thank you so very much.
Xox, g
Day 69
When I first lost feeling in my feet, it was December 23rd and I woke up in the spare bedroom of my in-laws. I thought maybe I slept badly, pinched a nerve. My feet felt floppy, as though they couldn’t hold shoes. As though I had pins & needles … that never ended.
Even when I finally got on a therapy that helped with my walking and my balance and my energy … my feet stayed stubbornly numb. I look at them and am thankful they are pretty feet. In my dark moments, I wish fervently to feel them again and hot tears sting my eyes. I smile at the tattoos that adorn my right foot — tattoos that I barely felt being inked. A tear slips down my cheek and catches in the upward crease of my mouth.
I try not to be angry at the things I’ve lost. I’ve gained as well, and mourning my losses won’t change their absence. I reminded myself of this as I struggled and wobbled and dragged my feet through a yoga practice today. Comparing today to five months ago is useless and honestly, both sad and pointless. Time marches on, my disease marches on and I can only be in my body of today.
It doesn’t change the deep despondence that exists in the dark corners of my soul. That is my truth, parts of the truth I carry behind my smile.
Xox, g
D5 Creation