I have been neglecting my physical fitness since I went to New York City, which is a trip that ended eight weeks ago. I haven’t been to the gym, or yoga, or done anything to break a sweat since the end of January. Hell, make that nine weeks. Nine weeks without going out of my way to do something that I always feel better for doing.
I’m not a gym rat or a yoga practitioner by any stretch of the imagination. I tend to jump on an elliptical and watch CNN and catch up on my reading, burning a few calories while simultaneously filling my brain with current events and history. I was making it to the gym anywhere from two to four times a week for about a year, just enough to keep the restaurant excursions from making me fat.
Well two months without a trip to the gym and I’m looking and feeling a little worse for it. While I’ve continued my usual diet of lean protein, fruit and veggies and eating the entire menu when going out to dinner, I can feel the difference the lack of physical activity makes.
The thing is… I’m not a big fan of working out. Even yoga, which I love, is a mental battle to get my ass on the mat, a sometimes agonizing series of voices in my head that, more often than not, talk me out of going. I know if I made it a priority, I would get there but this whole writing-every-day thing takes up at least ten hours a week, hours I previously spent in the gym. But I’m not quite feeling up to par as of late, and between the weird night shift hours and the lack of exercise, something has to give.
So I brought my yoga mat to the café today, in hopes that I can keep my drive to break a sweat long enough to actually get my bare feet on a mat. I’m always glad when I go, but only after, when I’m lying on the mat, breathing long and deep and feeling the endorphins flood through my body. If only burning calories was accomplished as easily as loading up a crack pipe – then I’d be at yoga three times a day.
There’s something about stretching that makes me lose myself. I am by no means naturally gifted when it comes to stretching and balancing, though I think it’s why I get so much out of yoga. By having to contort myself into unnatural poses, my brain is only free to think about the task in front of me and so after an hour of focusing on nothing but gentle movements and breathing – voila, I am relaxed.
The things in life that are good for us, the things that make us feel healthy and present, are not things that come naturally to most people. For me, they most often feel diametrically opposed to my natural state of wanting instant gratification, yet they are always the things in the long run that are worth doing. If fighting my own inherently lazy nature in order to feel healthy is what I need to do today to get a little piece of peace, so be it.
Namaste, motherfuckers… namaste.
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