Yoga Practice in Real Life

I've tried going to yoga studios, in an effort to reclaim my once-rich yoga practice.  That hasn't worked.  Scheduling, driving time, exhaustion..... there's always something that gets in the way.  I haven't really tried practicing at home, but I know what would happen.  The animals would be annoying and in the way, and there really isn't a place that I find restful enough.  I just tried setting up my mat in my office.  That might work, in limited circumstances.

But I have to find a way to get a meaningful, however basic, practice back in my life.  I want the body that yoga offers, particularly the flexibility.  But I also want the grounding and centering that yoga provides.  I feel sort of like I'm unraveling in the face of all that I have to do, and yet I have to do it.  How the heck do people manage?

I need to go through exactly the process that I went through when I solved any other problem. Baby steps are ok.   I had to choose to invest in me, but I also must admit that things don't have to be perfect.  I know how to make gourmet meals, and COULD do that every night.  But a grilled cheese sandwich works just fine, too. I don't need to start with a fully-realized version of an ideal yoga practice, whatever that even means.  My practice just has to start with showing up and doing something.  And even when one does have a fully-realized yoga practice, there are probably days of just showing up and doing something. 

But, I just realized, I'm solving the wrong problem here - or not wanting to admit publicly that there's a problem that precedes this problem. The room that would make the perfect yoga place has become a junk room - the room where you store things that you don't know what to do with.  It's scary in there.  Right now, and for a little while, my yoga practice needs to be meditatively, non-judgmentally,  clearing things out - literally making room in my life for a yoga practice.  When I started this year, I said that 'infrastructure" was my rather-unpoetic word for the year.  And here we are.  I have to do this infrastructure thing, in order to build the infrastructure for the body that I want.

Here's what I'm going for, in terms of space:

It's not super-fancy, but would work in the room that I have available. 

I also, though, need to think outside the box.  I need a yoga mat in my office.  I need a yoga mat in my car, in case I want to practice outdoors somewhere or I find myself in the town where yoga does exist.  I also need to consider re-activating my gym membership through the university Recreation Center.  They have yoga classes, and I could be taking advantage of those with comparatively little expense.

Now seriously though, what have I learned here?  Is there anything that someone could take away, and run with, in her own life?  Or am I just posting my organizational troubles?  Start small.  Even when it's humbling, start with baby steps.  Challenges are often linked to each other.  My lack of yoga is tied to being unclear as to how to use and organize and thrive in my home.  The more positive way of saying that is that I get to accomplish two goals here, and both are important.  And for heaven sakes, stop quitting things that you love.

What Would Triumph Even Look Like?

I roll my eyes a little when I hear people talk about branding as though it were important.  Oh, I suppose it's possible that it IS, but in my life I want to think about principles and contribution and artistry.  I don't want to think about staking a claim on a bit of intellectual or participatory terrain.  I know branding is not the same as marketing, but clearly they are related.  And I want to hang out in the supposedly-loftier realm of ideas.

And yet....

If this blog is to make any sense, and it must before I can commit to it as I feel I should, then it has to be about something.  Carving out a life at mid-life, and using all the pieces of my life as metaphor and path for that?  Could be.  Grace out of chaos?  Replacing shame with power?  Some of those things, all of those things.

I talk about creating and sustaining a triumphant, glorious, meaningful life - beginning, middle, and end.  But I don't even know what that means.  I do know this isn't it.  So, is it branding to say "Yes, this.  This is what I will talk about.  This is what I will explore and reflect on.  This is the path I will walk, and invite people to join me for?"  I suppose that's branding, of a sort.

So, let's think for a minute.  What IS a chatelaine?  And why did this metaphor occur to me for this blog? A chatelaine historically means the wife of the lord of the castle.  However, it came to mean a woman who owns or controls a large house.  It also references the chains worn on the lady-of-

the-manor's belt, with keys, sewing utensils.... the things she needs to manage the life she leads. The keys, etc... were a symbol of power.  This woman, the chatelaine, was quite possibly the only person who could, and did, walk into every room of the castle.  It was her job to do so.  So, she was always a career woman, the chatelaine, and she always had multiple roles.  She needed the right tools for her job.  And young women frequently (probably always) had a difficult time assuming this role and learning its intricacies.  It isn't "natural;"  it has to be learned.

So, I'm that, right?  I have this big house; a career I love; people I love; animals I love; things I want to do, make, write, cook; experiences I want to have; fitness feats I want to be capable of.  Fitness blogs, and there are some that I love, do fitness.  Homemaking blogs, and there are some that I love, do only that -even though in reality, like all of us, those people do a lot of things.  We are taught, especially for the purposes of branding, that focus and issue-specificity are good.  I suppose they are.  But, yawn....

Nobody gets to live like that, or I certainly don't.  Integration of ALL of it, and doing it all myself - as in, without a partner,  is what I have to figure out.  Women have been told, for all of my life at least, that we can't have it all.  Or, more positively perhaps, we can have it all, but not all at the same time.  Indeed, our cultural focus on whether or not women can have it all implies that the answer is no.  If we were just doing it, the question wouldn't keep coming up.

In some ways, this isn't the life I chose.  And yet, I celebrate and choose it now.  But I do not get to say "I can't have it all."  It all has to be done, and it has to be done by me.  I can't just succeed at work, and live in squalor.  I can't succeed at work and home, and be fat and unhealthy (those two things being different) because I didn't make time to work out.  You see the problem.  This chatelaine has to walk everywhere in the metaphorical castle.  And she, by God, gets it done.  I want to be her.

That's my brand.