Finding Peace

I hope you all had as beautiful a day as we did.  The sun was shining, the sky was blue, and Simon woke up from his nap in time to go for a nice walk.  We walked, we talked, we waved at our neighbors.  After that, we went home and staked out our backyard for this year’s vegetable garden.  I haven’t done a garden in a few years, our last few residences haven’t been able to or were not allowed to support such an endeavor.  But believe me, we now have plenty of room.

Anyway, this is all besides the point.  I haven’t been up to much of note lately, except I am still competing with my friend on this fitness challenge.  I had already given up on the new program  I was going to do, but then my husband read through it, decided he approved (gee thanks, honey) and wanted to do it with me.  So now we are going to be working out after Simon goes to bed 4 nights a week.  The other 3, we decided, we would dedicate to doing some yoga.

I have done a lot of yoga in the past.  I know that makes some people roll their eyes, I’m a 20-something female white suburbanite, of course I’ve done yoga.  But yoga truly had become really important to me.  I had a great gym instructor who I followed for over a year while my husband was deployed to Iraq.  When he came back and we moved, I started a 3-4 day a week Ashtanga practice at 5:30 in the morning.  I can’t even explain to you how happy this made me (at 5:30 AM!!!).  I felt light, happy, and while it could easily dissipate as soon as I left the building, while I was there, there was peace.

The last two nights I have had to drag myself to my yoga mat.  I used to take a lot of joy in teaching my husband, running my own little classes for him, and now I have a hard time finding joy in just following a DVD.  Something is just amiss.

Part of it, might be the home practice.  It is hard to concentrate when Ivan is running around with a jingly toy in his mouth, laying on the computer and messing up the whole class.  Then when you think everything is calm, you go into downward dog, and see Zoe chasing down a spider.  I have done classes at our local yoga studio too though, and while it might be easier to concentrate, the carefree feeling I used to get still just isn’t there lately.

I always used to roll my eyes at yoga classes that were just glorified stretching, but that is what I find myself gravitating towards.  Frankly, I could use the stretch.  I would love to get back to the place where I was, at my peak, when I was doing that Ashtanga practice, squatting over 100 pounds, and running 8:30 minute miles (fast for me).  But I probably won’t.  At least, not anytime soon.  And that is something I am having a hard time dealing with on all fronts.  I’m not as fast as I used to be, I’m not as strong as I used to be; I’m not as relaxed and I’m not as flexible.  And I’m certainly not at peace with any of it.

This is part of becoming a parent, I realize that.  My mind is just always busy.  I suppose that I can get back to really being able to connect to my yoga practice when Simon is older, but there has to be some other outlet in the meantime.  I have plenty of things that make me happy, there are lots of things I do that make me proud.  Life with Simon is busy and hectic, and I love it, and we are certainly never bored.

What I would do to truly feel some peace though…  I’m open to suggestions.  Things are only going to get crazier from here, I’m sure.  Maybe I need to start reading more?  Or maybe just getting back into a true habit of a yoga practice and exercise routine will eventually turn things around?

I don’t know what the solution is, but having the realization is the first step, no?  I think I’m officially on my first post-baby peace-seeking mission.  Maybe once we get this garden up, it will be our peaceful little outlet we can share.  Or it will just make us more busy.  At the very least though, we’ll get dinner out of it.