Day 86: Why not Today?

I had a great day today, spent mostly in the sunshine with good friends, good food, and good conversation. I dragged myself away to go the last class of the day at my studio.

This past week, at class, I often found myself drifting off, not thinking about anything, really, but not really present either. Just spaced out, and coming to with, "wow, did we already do a set of half-tortoise?" What is going on?! I'm on some kind of blissed out autopilot. Is this good or bad? I'm not sure, but it's been interesting.

Today, I felt fairly present, and the room was hot and very humid, and the little voices of worry and fear and excuses started speaking to me: "It's really hot. I'm so hot, and I probably didn't hydrate enough. I ate a lot today, so I need to take it easy. My leg muscles are tired." And so on. But I was going through the motions, listening to my teacher and doing her bidding. When she said, "Push your hips, push, push," during half moon, I pushed. When she said, "Lock your knee!" I locked my damn knee! I was trying to stick with it all and put effort into each posture, but the the little chorus of the usual excuses kept singing to me.

I was about halfway through the first side and first set of standing bow when I realized that I almost always start to give up on the posture at about that point. Too often, I listen to that voice that tells me to "save" my energy for some other posture, that I can try really hard on some other day, that some time when I have a lot of energy, then I'll give it my all and try to do it perfectly for the full allotment of time. So I had to answer that voice today, and ask, "Why not now? Why not today? When will the perfect time be?"

So I had to keep trying, to keep putting all my effort and energy into it.

It's so simple, but so difficult, this business of being present, being aware.

And I can't believe that we only have a couple of weeks left in the 101 Challenge.