I took to yoga like a pig to mud. Where have you ever seen a pig more contented, more connected, and more at home than wallowing in a puddle of warm, rich, gooey, mud? That is how I feel on my yoga mat — like a pig in mud.
I have always been a person who exercised — pushing my body to the limit, feeling the rush of endorphins and then the sweet tiredness afterward. I would, under the watchful eye of my personal trainer, work out in the gym, pushing weights, pushing myself, cursing the machines, and sending a few choice adjectives his way when he asked for ‘one more.’
So when 2020 came and we could no longer push ourselves in the gym, I found a towel and an online yoga practice and it felt as if I had come Home.
I did not go willingly — I still had doubts as to what this yoga thing could do for me, but after an extreme bout of anxiety saw me seeking solace in the art, I have never looked back since. Actually, for a few short months, my trainer and I decided to hit the weights again, but I wasn’t enjoying it anymore — I had found a new lover and the old one had grown stale. I tried to pretend, looking for a way to get the old mojo back but nothing worked. I ended up back to yoga and me — at home on my mat.
When an activity can trace its roots thousands of years in the past, there must be something about it — I found that ‘it’.
It was the connection that yoga brought to my mind, body, and soul.
It encouraged me to see my body as one moving part — working in tandem with my mind to connect my soul to something greater than me, something that was outside of me that I had been reaching for.
And so, every day as roll out my mat, I enter that space knowing that I would be much better for it.
I am a pig in mud.
Oink, Oink.