You do what you can do.

So, it’s been a while. And that’s ok.

I, like many of you, I’m sure, tend to be a little hard on myself and expect myself to never drop the ball. I got the idea to make a blog post about common misconceptions regarding yoga over 2 weeks ago. I even reached out to large groups people to get information about what they thought about yoga (the good, the bad, and the ugly). I had been working steadily for a few days to bring this content to you all when not one, but two emergencies came up. One emergency was work related, resulting in an unexpected, 3 day, out-of-state trip, and the other was personal, resulting in sadness, processing, and, again, an unexpected, 3 day, out-of-state trip. These two trips were bookends to an already planned, you guessed it, 3 day, out-of-state trip.

As I sat down at my computer, at home, to FINALLY type this post, I was internally shaming myself. I could have gone to a coffee shop, buckled down, and gotten this done already! I should do better, know better, BE better. I started to go over my list of the common misconceptions regarding yoga that people had told me about. I realized it was like reading a list of how I was feeling about myself at that exact moment.

One of the most repeated misconceptions I received was that the person felt not good enough to do yoga. People stated over and over that they felt too out of shape, too old, too inflexible. They said they thought yoga was only for those who already knew how to do it: the skinny blondes (not that there’s anything wrong with skinny blondes), the fit, the focused, the contortionists.

My goal is to bring yoga, in all its facets, to everybody and every body. Yoga is a forgiving, “meet you where you are” practice, and there I was berating myself for not being good enough while trying to type something to you guys saying that you are enough just the way you are. So, I went to the mat, did some poses, some breathing exercises, and let myself be imperfect.

Yoga gave me the tools to bring myself out of the darkest pit I’ve ever been in. That is what made me want to go to school to become a certified and registered teacher. The tools I gained helped me to gain balance and peace in my life, but I’ve been ignoring all of it for the sake of productivity. I got back into the mindset of “do more and be more” after neglecting my own self care, and my yoga practice, for too long.

This is real life. None of us are perfect. All of us will fall. But none of us will fail unless we give up and become stagnant. So, the common misconceptions post is still coming, but right now, I’m going to go back to the mat and give myself some care.