On Monday my fiancé said something that I want to explore further. Fiancé…that’s the first time I’ve used it “for real.” I said it several times this weekend in humorously exaggerated or sickeningly sweet ways, but this is the first “official” use.
He said, and I paraphrase, that there are “many different and beautiful things that make you you.” That even though I don’t like some of them, it’s important for me to accept my least favorite attributes with gentleness because they’re still pieces of myself that contribute to who I am.
There is an element of this in yoga. You’re supposed to be gentle with yourself when practicing the poses. You should still challenge yourself, just not overly so. If you can’t do a certain pose the way that you’d like, you’re instructed to just be in it the way that you can be in it. You can try again next time or when you’ve been holding it for a while if you’d like, but you’re taught to accept and be okay with the way you can do the pose at that moment.
Today I’ll take that practice off of the mat and into the streets. “Take it to the skreets, mos def.” A little shout out to my fiancé. Wish me luck out there.
Afterword: It took me nearly an hour to figure out that to save a chart as a picture in Word, you simply need to Ctrl Click and select “Save as Picture.” I accept this.