I have said before that I want to want to do yoga more than I want to do yoga. I think what I want is the benefit of having done yoga, but I’m not even sure what I mean by that. Mainly that when I do do yoga, I want it to suck less.
What sucks about it? I’m bad at it. Everything hurts – whether or not I’m doing yoga, but more so when I try to twist and stretch and balance. I’m not flexible and I used to be flexible. That’s probably a lot of what’s wrong between me and yoga: the distance between my perception of what it should be and what it actually is for me. The distance between how I see myself doing it and how I actually do it.
When I was a gymnast, I was flexible. I also practiced pretty much all the time that I wasn’t doing anything else. Not formal practice, but just repetition of things I wanted to be able to do that I couldn’t do at first. I wanted to be able to do the splits, so I split as far as I could (and often farther than my pants could) over and over and over, until I could get all the way to the ground.
I took the same approach to walkovers, round-offs, front and back flips, and endless attempts at aerials, though those only clicked for me one magical practice in the gym, never before and never after. I can’t say I would now recommend learning and practicing front flips or back layouts on the sidewalk in front of my childhood home – or any other sidewalk, for that matter – but I was nothing if not determined.
I had a similar approach to riding horses back then. If I decided I wanted to be able to jump up on a horse bareback, I would practice and fail, and practice and fall, and practice and scramble and gracelessly heave myself onto the horse’s back, until I could do it. Or later, when I wanted to get a certain feel in the canter transition – the feel that it didn’t feel like anything, really – I would do it over and over and over and over.
Age and horsemanship wisdom tell me now that drilling a horse is a sure way to sour them, but there’s a world of difference between repetition for the joy of the feel of the thing, and the numbing drilling of a rider with visions of perfect dressage scores dancing in their head.
My riding life bears a striking similarity to my yoga life these days. I feel like it’s something I should want to do more than it’s something I want to do. The things I study and believe about the importance of developing a relationship with the horse rather than doing things to the horse, or making the horse do things, can create a wall that feels insurmountable on some days. I have no interest in competing in any discipline and if asked what my horsemanship goal is, or what I want that relationship between myself and my horse to look like, my answer would be the same as my yoga answer: I want it to suck less.
Intellectually I know this is not a good goal. “Intellectually” is my problem, however. Nothing gets in my way quite like my mind. When I do yoga I have a little too much time and space for my mind, as Anne Lamott says, to think its thinky thoughts. The more I try to clear my mind, the thinkier my thinky thoughts get. The only time they get thinkier is when I’m around my horses trying to do the “right” thing.
There’s a good likelihood that the repetitive practice I used to do is a lot closer to the visions I have of what yoga – or horsemanship – should look like than anything I’m doing now. It would look like doing something. Doing it badly, doing it awkwardly, doing it wrong, doing it laughing, and every once in a while, for a brief shining moment, doing it just the way I picture it.
I was smiling the whole way through this. 😃 I’m in this space with playing fiddle. I think about practicing…and then nah, never mind. I definitely fall in the “wanting it to suck less,” only really I just wish that I would suck less at it. Wonderful blog Tessa – thank you!
I do love the title of this one. I had no idea you were a gymnast. I kinda picture you as current day Tessa doing splits in your kitchen while the dogs watch.
You’ve been spying on me through my microwave again, haven’t you?
I’ve found that when it comes to anything physical at this point, I have to focus only on getting pleasure from the actual process, rather than focusing on any particular “goals” or outcomes. That way I do make (slow, eventual) progress, but it doesn’t feel like something I “should” do.
Good way of looking at it! Thanks, D.