So the theme of week two of my forty-day yoga quest was vitality. Some of you extroverts may get really excited about embarking on a week of cultivating vitality. As an introvert (note that doesn���t necessarily mean shy���just that I recharge with quiet, solitary activities), I was a little intimidated. It sounded really high-energy. Like it might push me out of my comfy cocoon. It did. But in a good way. Here are the highlights:

LESS NOODLE MORE MUSCLE... We all have predispositions in our practices and in our lives. I lean toward yin and shy away from yang. I like restorative poses and long holds in hip-opening poses. I am challenged by strenuous sequences that make my muscles shake. When I first started transitioning to a vigorous flow practice a few months ago, I struggled to muster the vitality necessary to complete series of poses that were done repeatedly in most classes. It wasn���t that I didn���t understand how to do them or that my body couldn���t twist itself into the poses, only that I hadn���t pushed myself to do them over and over without resting between them. My muscles were used to working with liberal breaks for introspection and adjustment that come with Iyengar yoga. Guess what? Today���even though this is a cleanse week (all vegan���mostly fruit and soup with a little rice & veggies) and I���m fighting off a cold, I rocked those sequences that challenged me back in the fall. I still cringe when I realize we���re going to hang out in crescent lunge for a bit, but I push through. Which leads us to...

PUSH THROUGH OR BACK OFF?... That is the question. And there is no pat answer. On our mats, we receive an education that is lacking most other places in our lives. Here we become acquainted with our unique set of physical, mental and spiritual leanings. We figure out how to best care for this complex form of ours. We move, breathe and sweat our way into awakenings that create an owner���s manual of sorts���just for us. During this week of discerning what brings me life and what saps it, I had to decide when it was life-giving to push through and when I was enlivened by backing off. I directed my energy toward a tweaky area of my low back that had begun acting up when I started flowing in my practice. I thought for a long time that I needed to back off because I was overworking that sacral region. What coalesced for me during this week was the realization that I was actually underworking other muscles (like my core and some upper back muscles) because I was backing off too much. When I pushed through mindfully, and focused on keeping integrity in my sacrum (i.e. not letting it move willy nilly or letting my tailbone fly out), my low back began to hurt less and feel more like it was an integral part of my body, not the problem child I was always trying to fix.

WHERE YOUR MIND GOES, YOUR ENERGY GOES... This was my meditation aha for the week. Reflecting after a 30-minute meditation class, I realized that all the thoughts that pinged in to disturb my meditative bliss were thoughts about things I needed to do for other people. Rarely did something self-focused interrupt me. In the group discussion following the class, I shared that at the end of the meditation when we���d vigorously rubbed out hands together, they hadn���t even felt like my hands. I felt disconnected from them, and in turn, disconnected from the work I am called to do in the world. With the awareness that���perhaps���I was losing valuable energy fretting about problems (often involving my children) that weren���t mine to solve, I could mindfully commit to focusing on those things that were within my purview. And I could choose to bless the rest and let it go.

I am playing a bit of catch up, as I am now entering week four of this yogic adventure. Look for posts on equanimity and restoration coming soon!