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kmikaylah · 10 years

Photo

Yogini

alright. one idea that i want to make sure is never perpetuated on my blog is the notion that all those pretty yoga poses you see in photos are super easy and that flexibility is the gold standard for being able to do them. i saw the above partridge pose on my favourite yogini Tina Bock’s instagram a couple of weeks ago, and i thought “wow! what a beautiful pose, i’ve never seen that one before. that’ll be no problem since i can easily touch my feet to my head.” so, i gave it a try. i went into it with a cocky attitude, expecting to succeed on my first go.

i failed miserably. at best i was falling out of it into wild thing and at worst i was falling flat on my butt. i couldn’t seem to find my foot and when i did, i’d lose my balance and come crashing onto my hip without a hand to break my fall (since, you know, one was holding me up and the other was grabbing my foot.) i practiced this frequently ever since and i still can’t hold it for longer than a few seconds. if you look closely at the top picture, my hand is between my foot and my head, when i need to be able to grab the top of my foot and press my arch to my head. and even this picture, though pretty, is one aesthetically pleasing second out of exponentially more wipeouts.

today i practiced this for nearly half an hour. i was getting frustrated. i was getting sweaty. i was getting bruised. i was making progress, but it was slow going and i was making my grumpiest of all the grumpy rachael faces. by the time i stopped i was seething with annoyance at myself. finally, we arrive the second photo, when i just put my head on the ground, breathed, and said through gritted teeth, "i will try again tomorrow."

i think that is what yoga is. a lot of the time, it’s trying again tomorrow. so when you see people doing tricky poses that look so easy for them but are so freakin’ difficult for you, remember that they probably didn’t just do it. even if they’re really bendy, they probably tried again tomorrow. so you should too.

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kmikaylah · 10 years

Photo

Beautiful