Be a total Yoga Babe.

Despite the fact that I was too stoned to yoga, it up today. I have been going rather fatefully and, in time, I will be THE baddest yoga babe of all time. And FYI – I can already put my leg behind my head so beat that!

Things are so hectic right now that I am working hard on honing my yoga babe presence off the mat. A random list:

1)Big work deadlines including one this week that I just won’t make.

2) Huge layoffs in the industry, every industry I guess. So close to the holidays. Makes me anxious, but also sad.

3) Realization that my husband is doing absolutely everything he can do to support me at home: weekend cooking, early morning point person with our daughter. Yesterday, he mopped and vacuumed and did laundry and put up the tree.

I am grateful, but I was also sad because I could see he was exhausted and hadn’t had a ton of down time.

Funny, I work myself to the bone—up at 4:30 some days, in bed at 11 p.m. a lot of days. But I don’t like to see that overworking mirrored in the ones I love.

To tie it back to yoga, it reminds me that last week in class, our teacher said sivasana, or the final relaxation, is the most important pose of all.

Here’s hoping for rest, and downtime, and peace of mind * for my family and yours * this holiday season.

Went to a yoga class this week for the first time in almost a month. Every part of my body and more importantly my mind and dare I say, soul, was craving it.

Work has been so hectic—hence my absence from 43T. When I come home, I try really hard to be focused and present with my husband and little girl. I’ve been sorely missing the me time.

Anne Sexton once said, put your ear down next to your soul and listen hard.

That’s what I felt I did in yoga this week. Started listening again.

I didn’t feel like going to yoga today. 1) Spent all morning in meetings. 2) The class is challenging 3) Feeling more than slightly overwhelmed by all that’s on my plate.

But I came to the very simple conclusion that I will never be a yoga babe if I don’t practice yoga. So I went and it was great. I muddled through the tough parts and the parts that are easier for me (standing poses as opposed to vinyasa series) felt really nice.

In other news, my little girl is teething and wailing like a wounded animal which just about breaks my heart. I’m appreciating my husband for meeting me half way especially after a girl’s getaway weekend when it became clear how many guys I know are really dropping the ball. I’d like my husband to take the ball and run with it like Peyton Manning. But I’ll take half way.

And I guess that’s about it. It’s been a strange year. Strange and sad. It reminds me of the first line of the Bell Jar… “It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.”

Which is not to say I’m feeling Sylvia Plath-ish. It’s just that, for me, it has been a sad and sulky year (as opposed to queer and sultry.) And I think that I’m making my way through it. And without yoga, even only once a week, it would’ve been a lot tougher.

P.S. I did a lot of child’s pose today in yoga, when I was tired and couldn’t keep up with the vinyasa. It’s very humbling. For me, like admitting that I’m not as good as the rest of the class. (Though my yoga teacher would hate to hear talk of “good” and “bad”—it’s 43 things and I can be honest, right?)

But tonight, when I was putting the bambina to bed instead of singing her a song, I told her about my day and I told her that I went to yoga so I can be a better Mom, a better friend, a better partner to my husband, a better friend to myself. And she took the bottle out of her mouth and smiled at me. Which has got to be the best child’s pose ever.

There’s a 45 minute lunchtime yoga class about 2 blocks away from my office. I went my very first day at work, but haven’t been back since. Went today and was so happy.

It was a vinyasa class and a little challenging for me, and there was a point in the class when I thought, “Why did I come? It’s so stressful to get away from the office. This class is so hard. I’m still nowhere near being super bendy girl.” But I did it. And I’d love, in an ideal world, to begin every week with a Monday lunchtime yoga class.

But I’m not even worried about routines. I’m just getting it in where I can fit it in. And today was a good one.

So the class i was planing on taking got canceled but no worrys i will become a yoga babe.. eventually.

Had a really great talk today with one of my mentors. Was explaining that a rift I’m having with a close friend was tearing me apart and I keep replaying our “fight” over and over again.

It’s something I do all the time when I’m stressed and sad, I just play the movie over and over again in my head.

He said that I shouldn’t expect not to play the movies in my head. In some ways, it’s human nature. What I can do is give myself a signal to get up and exit the movie theater.

I like to draw so my plan is to keep a little sketch book and that by making the break from obsessing/movie watching to doing a quick sketch, I can make a practice of not dwelling.

I thought it was such, such good advice. So tomorrow, I am getting up early to go to yoga before work and I am dedicating my practice to him.

After a week on vacation (and a week of recovery), I’m ready to get back on the mat! On tap for tonight: Power Yoga with “Yoga Cyborg” Rodney Yee. (That’s just my personal pet name for him. No actual human should be able to do the things that guy does.)

The computer at sign in reports that I hadn’t been there in nearly two months. I’ve taken a few classes at another studio and done some on the road, but caramba.

Still I got up at 5 am to be there, begged my husband to take the bambina to his folks so I could have the early morning and then went to a 6:15 am class.

It was hard. And hot as promised. But I feel good. And happy and lucky that husband was so supportive. Busy week ahead and I wanted to start it on the mat!

Went to yoga class on Sunday evening, even though my favorite thing to do on Sunday is laze around with my husband and little one and do absolutely nothing at all.

But I thought I’ll never be a yoga babe unless I take some steps toward my goal, so I went and it was lovely.

Sometimes the hardest part of being in a yoga class is the intensity of the emotions in the room. Sometimes I feel like that Feist song, “I feel it all.” I feel the competitiveness of the too thin girls with body issues and I feel the rigidity of the middle aged left wing women who were hippies and are sorely disappointed with the world and are certain to be the first one to lean on the horn when we get to the parking lot and it’s all backed up.

I feel my own loneliness and sadness of losing my brother this past winter in a car accident and from the snippets of before class conversation, I know that other people are dealing with loss too—aging parents, miscarriages, failed marriages.

There are moments in class when I feel it all and I think what could be more sad than a bunch of problem laden Americans chanting and trying to do this thousand year old Eastern practice.

Except I think the really important part is that we try.

In her Nobel Laureate speech Toni Morrison said, we die—that may be the meaning of life, but we do language, that may be the measure of life.

As I manage my ongoing grief about my brother, balance the weight of it against the other sadnesses I’ve overcome in my life, growing up in poverty, having an abusive father, I feel that yoga is a cornerstone of my wellness.

To paraphrase Toni Morrison, I cannot avoid death—that may be the meaning of life, but I do yoga, which is, if not the measure, then certainly the foundation of my effort to live a healthy and positive life.