Challenge with Support

I often think of my yoga practice as a laboratory for life, a place I get to test out my reactions and habits. A microcosm where I notice how so much of what I do or what happens mirrors the macrocosm of life.

This past week, for example, has been challenging in terms of the transitions back to school for my children and me, additional travel for my husband while I’m gearing up for additional work responsibilities, added activities for both of my teens. None of this is negative or out of the norm for this time of year, it’s just all so busy.

Amy Poehler writes that every mother should have a wife and this week I sure felt that. I needed support. It’s not that any one of the many challenges could be cut out, nor did I really want to let go of any particular challenge, it’s that I needed support to meet the challenges.

This morning I found my way to my mat and engaged in exactly that. I began slowly, using a prop in every pose at first, supporting myself with external resources. Then, little by little, I realized that because the external props were buoying my practice, I began to feel stronger, able to better support myself with my core, my legs, my breath, my ability to relax my nervous system and busy brain.

This is when it occurred to me how often I really need support in the every day of life. So often, I fail to notice the “props” and “resources” that come to me in the form of friendship, my husband, much needed rest, a cup of coffee. Yet, when I pay attention, I am made stronger to meet whatever challenge there is.

Sometimes in a yoga practice, I am led by a teacher—a person who guides and directs me toward postures. Some of these postures bring up sensations and challenges I struggle to meet. So then, I have some choices. I can avoid these challenges, I can get irritable and suffer in the challenges, or I can bring in an external resource that might buoy me enough to discover I’m strong enough to soften in the challenge. It’s sort of like the way life gives me the same.

This week, friend, consider your own relationship to challenge. If you find yourself noticing that you could use some support, it doesn’t really matter why that is as much as it matters what you choose to do with that realization. My hope for me and for you, is that we allow ourselves to be met here in our need, that we reach for or ask for or accept the “prop” that will enable us to know we don’t have to go it alone, and in that discovery we find we can suddenly hold ourselves up with all the right effort and ease.