Ujjayi - Victorious Breath

I told Dr. B about having a panic attack after teaching yoga several weeks ago, and that after this happened, I decided I wanted to teach yoga so that -- by intentionally putting myself in anxiety-inducing situations -- I could learn to be strong through the panic.

Dr. B said that basically what I'm doing is exposure therapy. He said exposure therapy is 100% the most difficult form of therapy. But also that it's the most effective.

When he said that, I thought, "Well that settles it, I have to do this. It there's one thing I'm good at, it's choosing the most extreme option."

So first I climbed a fkking rock wall.

I did this for two reasons: the first reason is that I'm scared of heights. So I climbed that damn wall over and over. And the second, because the last (and only) time I went climbing was with my former best friend 4-ish years ago. I wanted to take climbing back, regardless of the fact that Charlotte had decided to leave and take our entire friend group/book club with her. GODDAMMIT, I CAN CLIMB ROCKS WITH NEW PEOPLE!!!!!

That felt very exhilarating. I made a whole new friend group on my own! And I climbed rocks! This proves that I can do hard things. However, teaching yoga was still the behemoth that stood in front of me.

Jade came over the other night and we drank copious amounts of wine and I said, "I don't understand why teaching yoga is so hard for me!!! Look at (other yoga friends)!! It's so easy for them! Why is it so panic-inducing for ME!?!?"

Jade said, "I hate to break this to you, but you are a different person than those people. You were raised different ways. You have different reactions to Life."

I insisted, "But it's not fair that teaching induces panic in me! I've been teaching other stuff for 16 years now!"

Then Jade said, "It's important to remember that it doesn't really matter what your experience is as a teacher. What actually matters is your students' experience in their own bodies."

"Damn," I said. "That was deep af."

So I decided to focus on that instead.

Today, I managed to wake up at 6 a.m, a nice normal time, instead of the 3 a.m. call time my anxiety had been demanding in previous weeks. It was great.

Then we focused throughout class on the breath-body connection of ujjayi breathing. This is also called "victorious breath." It's like you're holding a conch shell up to your ear and hearing the entire ocean inside. Only, you're the conch shell and your breath is the ocean. How great is that?

Things were all going swimmingly until, in the middle of class, my chapped lips started GUSHING BLOOD. I was horrified. There was blood all over my mouth and hands and it would not stop and I had to just keep talking and doing lunges through it!!!! I felt like a serial killer.

I guess that's why we practice breathing. So that when Life throws a bloody curveball, we can keep going.

Several months ago, I was in a more advanced class, and the teacher taught us this pose:

And she said that it took her 5 years to be able to do it. If you knew this teacher, she's a BOSS. She can do every hard pose known to man!!! So it was really bizarre that I managed it on the first try. But I keep this picture to remind myself that I can do hard things, too. My hard things might be different than other people's hard things. But I'm getting there...

The thing that Jade was proud of me for today was actually not teaching a solid class. It was saying that it went pretty well, instead of saying that I did terribly. Because apparently the way you frame things is half the battle.

And in the class itself, at the end, I turned down the music, I stopped speaking entirely, and as we flowed, we listed to the waves of our victorious breath...