Posts Tagged ‘Yoga’

By Shell

Pre-kids, I was like the yoga master.

Give me a crazy balancing pose and I could hang out there all day.

The poses where there are different levels of difficulty, I would just automatically go into the most challenging one.

I felt graceful and strong. I was toned and lean and walked tall; after all there’s no slouching in yoga.

Yes, I could do this:

And this:

I even took prenatal yoga. My instructor and I got pregnant around the same time, so she modified things for the two of us.

And then I had my baby. And tried to go back to yoga.

Those poses where the instructor would tell us how to do them and then say “If that’s too easy, you can go down to level two. And then if you want to challenge yourself, you can try level three”?

Those? I couldn’t even do level one. The simplest pose, like downward facing dog, was hard.

I was angry at my body.  How could I go from being ready to start the training to become a yoga instructor to looking like an absolute beginner?

And I let that stop me from practicing. I didn’t want to do it if I couldn’t do it as well as I could before. I took my toys mat and went home.

But, I’m on a mission to get back to pretzel-girl. Maybe I won’t ever be able to bend and twist like I used to. But, it will never happen if I don’t hit the mat and try again.

I miss feeling graceful and strong. Maybe I’m not as toned and lean, but I want to walk tall again.

What did you do before having kids that you’ve since stopped doing… but would like to start doing again?

Shell is a former teacher turned stay-at-home mom of three boys. Sometimes, she has to bite her tongue irl. But, at Things I Can’t Say, she spills it all on her blog, giving you the straight story on motherhood, marriage, and life in general.