I spent a weekend in Calgary earlier this summer.

It was fun (although tiring) to poke around the downtown, walk through Eau Clair Market and people watch at Prince's Island Park.

 

This beautiful young couple was getting married. The sign just outside the open cafe where the wedding party gathered said it all:

 

June 2022

 

 

 

My intention for today's post was to talk about yoga.

How yoga - my yoga, my practice, the way I teach, and even my business - are all changing and evolving, once again. How it is scary and exciting, yet again. And how I don't know what things will look like once this growth spurt is over.

 

Yet, somehow, it didn't feel quite right to leap into the future without first pausing to acknowledge what we have collectively been through in the last couple of years, and how many of us haven't yet had the chance to process it all.

 

 

Two recent conversations brought this need for a pause of recognition to my mind. One with my son, and another with Gabi - my psychologist.

 

My son is living his dream - working on a research team at Waterton National Park, studying wild species and their interactions with humans. He worked so incredibly hard in the last several years to land this opportunity with Parks Canada, you'd think he should be in seventh heaven. Yet he is working through some very heavy emotional stuff.

 

Our conversation has reminded both of us how very messy, utterly frustrating, exhausting, and at times downright scary Covid years have been. How many times we felt like we've been punched in the gut. And how many times we just wanted it to be done. Over with. Finished. DONE.

And how - time, and time, and time again - we kept on going, because keeping-on-going was the only option available. One foot in front of the other; one small step at a time.

 

We talked about the impact of all that accumulated stress on us, our friends, our family, our relationships. How this compounded stress had to come out, one way or the other. And how grateful we both are to have the relationship in which we can share even our most difficult things with each other to take this heavy weight off our shoulders.

 

 

Gabi and I talked about the added stressors of my own expectations.

I was raised in a culture that idolized the "cool, calm, collected", and in a family that considered the "strong, silent type" as the very pinnacle of human achievement, the most valuable character virtue one can ever attain.

 

And there I was - a nervous wreck; a complete, total human mess. I felt ashamed that I couldn't manage my emotions, my panic, my fears. I couldn't find even an iota of compassion for how I was feeling, even though the practice of self-compassion has been high on my list of priorities.

 

It took a lengthy conversation with my therapist to uncover where these expectations of "life performance" came from, and recognize that perhaps they aren't necessarily a fit for me any more. It took even longer to find compassion for the parts of me that were scared, unmoored, and struggling.

 

 

The pandemic might be coming to a close now, but I don't believe that Covid is completely done with us quite yet.

 

Not in the way of rising cases or new mutant viruses - even though that might still come in the fall - but in the way of sore eyes from the many hours of zooming; in the way we are afraid to hug a stranger, or stand close to someone in a check out line; in the way of long Covid, torn friendships, divided families and broken relationships; in the way of exhausted nurses and utterly spent medical system; in the way of our dismantled ability to trust news or the government. In the way of our lost loved ones - so many that died surrounded by beeping machines and strangers instead of family and friends.

 

 

Our personal journeys through pain are not unlike our collective journey through Covid. Except for this: with Covid, we were all in it. We understood each others' fears, frustrations, and disappointments. We knew  - at least to a degree - what the others were going through.

 

Pain, on the other hand, is a private struggle.

Even if our foggy minds can somehow find adequate words to convey what is going on, we cannot make others feel inside of our experience. And often we refrain from sharing too much - cause it feels like our close people grow tired of our struggle.

 

Finding our way through chronic pain often feels heavy, lonely, messy, utterly frustrating, absolutely exhausting, and half of the time is even harder because of the weigh of expectations we put on ourselves.

 

Yet, just like it is with Covid, it is possible to move forward from chronic pain - one foot in front of the other; one small step at a time.

 

Our pain journeys can become our healing journeys - maybe right after we pause to acknowledge how really very hard it all is, and maybe when we find a community that not only gets us - on the inside of our experience - but also cheers us on as we try our darnedest to help ourselves.

 

 

I believe for our personal and collective health sake, we have yet to grieve, to give room to our sadness, to mourn our losses and find our ground, before we can leap ahead into the newly changed reality.

 

Here is to summer breaks, new chapters, and newly-found resilience.

 

 

P.S. Fall session registrations open on August 17. Stay tuned!