THANKFUL FRIDAY
Cindy Maddera
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Wednesday morning, I woke up with a sore throat and congestion and that hot/cold clammy feeling you get when you are sick. I crawled back under the covers and said “no thank you.” I woke up later in the morning and moved from my bed to the couch where I spent the rest of the day watching Hanna on Amazon and the latest episode of Call the Midwives (you guys, when that woman had the triplets, ugly crying) and Riverdale. Riverdale is a guilty pleasure and feels like reading all those books written by V.C. Andrews. I can’t help but get the feeling that Betty really doesn’t have a sister Polly who lives in a group home after a psychotic breakdown. I suspect that Betty is Polly and she’s just been brainwashed into forgetting the horrible thing that happened to her to cause her breakdown. The doctors wiped out ‘Polly’ and replaced her with Betty. Riverdale also feels very much like a dark version of Dawson’s Creek. Jughead is Pacey. Archie is Dawson. Veronica is Jen. Betty is Joey.
Michael came home later that evening with a sickly Cabbage in tow. It was decided that she would stay the night with us and Michael would stay home with her on Thursday. The Cabbage spent the rest of the evening throwing up, laying on the bathroom floor and then laying in her bed, repeating the throwing up part a few more times before settling into a slumber. I knew that no matter how bad I felt when I woke up on Thursday, that I was going to work because I wanted nothing to do with a stomach bug added to a sinus infection. There’s been lots of disinfecting going on around the house in the last two days. When I woke up Thursday, I felt a bit better, but every thing took me twice as long to do because living life is exhausting. I got to work and opened an email from a coworker saying that he’d be out today because their 8 year old was up all night throwing up. Then my boss said the same was true for his wife. Looks like we are all on the Oregon Trail together.
What’s disappointing was how this week started out promising. It started with good intensions. The newish morning yoga routine was happening. We voted. I exercised. We tried a new recipe with zucchini and asparagus and we did not like it, but ate it any way. I repurposed those leftovers into a Mexican inspired pasta dish with mini tortellinis and soyrizo. We loved this. Except by Wednesday, it looked as though we had just spent Monday and Tuesday paving our path to Hell. And today I am thinking about how often I enter into things with a some preconceived notion of how I expect life to be or how very disappointed I am with myself for not sticking to those good intentions.
abhāva-pratyaya-ālambanā tamo-vr̥ttir-nidra: Dreamless sleep is the void of all thought patterns. - 1/10 Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
In the discussion for this Sutra, it talks about how our actions are directed by our intentions and are carved out from a life of reactions. It is our fight or flight response that so often dictates our reactions and as a result, our intentions are not made by our own choices. “Yoga is a means of taking ownership of those intentions by actually making choices.” What choice am I making for myself here, when I set the intention to practice yoga in the mornings? I have noticed that when I do my early morning practice, my body is not so stiff and achy. I have more pep in my morning steps and there’s a little less chatter inside my brain. By setting the intention to do my yoga practice at all, I am making a choice to care for this body. The true intention I should be making is to care for this body. More powerful than saying that I will do something is the action of doing it. This week I made choices to care for this body. Some times that choice looks like getting on my mat and flowing through poses, while other times it looked like laying on the couch with hot tea, a blanket and both of the animals tucked in around me while I watch crappy TV.
Both choices are yoga.