Recently, after a bit of a break, I got back on the yoga mat after two weeks without yoga or any kind of workout. I was busy. It was hot. I had my period. Life, basically.

My body was stiff and tight. I heard cracking with every little move. Surprisingly, the strength was still there, buried under a layer of tension and resistance. I could feel that it would be pretty easy to push myself and… hurt my wrist, most likely.

Sometimes it’s tempting to turn that guilt into a heavy workout, sweat it all out, punish the pause. Not be able to move the next day.

As I stretched into a downward-facing dog, I had this thought:

You can’t do two weeks of yoga all at once.

Unfortunately.

Twenty minutes of gentle movement felt like the upper limit, not the starting point. And the real challenge wasn’t in pushing myself harder, it was in showing up again the next day.

My brain doesn’t like that. It loves momentum and intensity. It loves a sudden spark of inspiration, a deadline, a problem to solve in one long, obsessive sitting. Sometimes it procrastinates for days, then kicks into high gear and finishes everything in a dramatic 12-hour burst.

That kind of pattern works in other parts of my life. It’s chaotic, but it gets things done.

But not here.

Movement resists that pattern. It doesn’t reward haste. It doesn’t care that I feel behind or that I’m trying to redeem myself. You can’t binge your way back into balance. That’s frustrating sometimes. To want to do more, to fix it faster, and realize that the only way is steady, gentle, and small. It requires a different kind of discipline. One that isn’t about pushing through, but about holding back. One that asks me to listen instead of force.

There’s something humbling about being forced to go slow. I don’t love it. But I think I need it. Everything else in my life moves so fast: organizing an event, keeping up with messages, jumping between tabs, trying to stay visible, responsive, on it. Social media feeds me dopamine 24/7, trains my brain to expect novelty, reaction, speed.

It’s chaotic and overstimulating, and part of me seems to thrive in that urgency. But then I get to the mat, and my body doesn’t care. It has its own pace. It just wants to move gently. To breathe. To be bored, even.

Ant that boredom is uncomfortable sometimes. Like a withdrawal from intensity.

Not every practice is a breakthrough like the one I got doing a headstand. On the contrary, it’s usually a quiet kind of consistency. Doing a little bit every day. 

So tomorrow I’ll unroll the mat again. And the day after. And then again.
That's the real challenge.
And the only way.