One More Try

COLLISION 00022

If I believe as I do that travel is a journey, not a series of disconnected episodes, then I must see its influence at work in my life as much when I’m at home as when I’m on the road.  There is no place where home and road connect for me as often as they do on the yoga mat.  It is there that two distinct halves of me feel free to come together again, even if temporarily, as one.

I consider myself beyond blessed to have found a teacher whose weekly private instruction has inspired me to cultivate a lasting relationship with Yoga.  For the last two-and-a-half years, Jamie, my instructor, has chiseled away at my skepticism, shrinking my disbelief that a single hour a week could make a lasting difference in my mood, mindset and motivation. 

Behind Jamie’s intense style of instruction, one perfectly matched to my own style of learning, I began to expand my appreciation for the art, the craft and the practice that is Yoga. What started out as just another way to tone my arms and abs and look better in the next yoga class has become so much more. 

While we eventually settled into a Sunday afternoon rhythm, we first started practicing together on Monday evenings after work.  In the beginning, the hardest part of clicking the habit into place was just getting there.  I initially resented having to carve out the time.  I regarded our weekly sessions, though I had been the one who had booked them, as frivolous, needling distractions from the more weighty demands of an all-consuming to-do-list.  

Back then, I simply didn’t have access to the self-awareness or headspace to appreciate these sessions for the privilege and oasis that they really were. 

Some weeks, and as 2024 dragged on, most weeks, it pained me to power down my laptop mid-sentence, trading out the day’s he-said, she-said drama for battles with the ludicrous downtown Chicago rush-hour traffic.  Each time a session ended, however, leaving behind only a steady breath and a just-as-steadying sense of peace, I never regretted spending a single minute there. 

What an incredible lesson in commitment and balance Yoga has come to reinforce for me.  I wouldn’t understand until years later that all of it was part of my practice.  The early resistance to obligation, the tension that existed between what seemed like competing priorities, the discipline required of me to tune out the world once I stepped on the mat.  All of it was shaping me, changing me. One choice at a time.

Before ever taking my first lesson with Jamie, I remember, almost laughably now, that I thought I was programming a chill and easy weekly slot into my calendar. And then we held Chair poses, Warrior IIs and Triangles for what seemed like forever.  

Over the last several years, we have uncovered opportunities to strengthen muscle groups and improve my balance.  She assigned homework. I ignored it.  Then somewhere along the way, I started doing it.  Lunges, bridges, side planks, deadlifts, dolphins.  Not all at once, not all at first.  

It’s like with anything we face that we’re not quite good at. We have to realize on our own that we want it. That’s when I started adding in my own self-assigned homework.  Puppy Dog Poses, Morning Sun Salutations, Single-Leg balance exercises, even jumping rope for my boxing coach. 

As excellent as Jamie is about acknowledging how far I’ve come since I started, she’s just as good about pushing me to go farther. There is always another level.

The Half Moon. A pose that feels so out of reach today that she might as well be asking me to balance my whole body from my big toe while sipping steaming hot coffee out of a tiny teacup.  Every week, she slides it into the agenda. What follows is a drawn-out stretch of agonizing futility and frustration.  

Before ever leaning in and getting my leg up and set, I tip over.  I just don’t have the strength in my glute.  I just don’t have the balance.  I just don’t have the awareness of where my body leans when my leg shoots back.  I sweat from the inside out.  She asks me to do it again and again.  Does she actually think my leg is going to shoot back just so, the other one is going to firm up and do its job, and then my torso is going to twist open? Too cute, I chide from within. 

I try to focus. I try to open my heart, as they say.  I tip over again.  But there is no giving up, no moving on. She stands behind me, spotting and supporting me.  We try again. I tip over. We use the wall as a prop so I can get a better feel for it.  We only stop when it’s clear my legs are toast.  But something happens after she calls it.  I want to try it again.  I want to show her that what she saw in me, I saw in myself for just a flash. So sometimes I ask if we can try it again.  And then I fall over.

Yoga?  In an encounter series about the moments that make travel matter?  All day long.

My last lesson with Jamie was August 30.  She moved to New York, but not before giving me a place to find peace, confidence and strength at home and on the road.  She’s changed not only the body that shows up on the mat week after week. She’s changed the woman who shows up in and for this world.   One hour, one choice, one homework assignment. One ‘one more try’ at a time.