Back in 2009 and 2010 I became an Ashtanga yoga teacher. I completed the training, did extensive hands-on teaching as an apprentice, loving every minute of it. After 25 years of corporate life, I had found “my thing”. But, just when I thought I had found what I was looking for, I lost it.

Sadly, I did not look like the other yoga instructors. At 50, my body didn’t bend the way their bodies did, and my body had acquired a little extra padding that, despite my best efforts, seemed here to stay. To remedy these shortfalls, I used a time-worn strategy of mine that had worked many times before – I tried harder. That meant I worked harder, longer, more often. I went all in.

As I pushed on, I couldn’t tell injuries from growth. I couldn’t slow down and risk losing all I’d worked for, including my meager income. I couldn’t question this path, or I’d lose this hard-earned new place in the world, and with it, my dream.

The result: not a bendy body, but a broken body.

Who had I put in charge of this dream? My ego. An ego is a dangerous thing in a yoga practice. I learned that the hard way as my body rebelled. When I could stand the pain in my body no longer, I hit pause, hoping a couple of weeks rest would do the trick. But, after a couple of weeks my body emphatically screamed “No!”. Even months later, I could not even fold forward without grimacing in pain. I could not find my way back to yoga with a body that refused to do yoga.

Back then, it took three months to be able to sit, fold forward and reach (but not touch my toes), whereas before my chest had lain easily on my thighs. It took my ten months to be able to do a painless backbend again. My ego did not like this at all.

Add to that, my grief. I missed the chanting, the Sanskrit lessons, my yoga practice, the community, my teacher, the shala. I mourned my lost dream. Even worse, I had to start again on a different dream. Which I did, but that’s not the story I want to tell today.

Over the years, I have found my way back to my yoga practice and lost it again and again. At the beginning of 2020, I found myself beginning again. What’s that saying, “If you don’t want to start over, stop quitting.” That mantra rang in my ears as I acknowledged that I feel better when I do my yoga practice regularly. 

And, with that, I began again. But this time, I did it in a different way than I’ve ever done it before. I set an intention to do yoga in a way that I could sustain far into the future. I wanted to be in it for the long haul, rather than get a good workout as soon as physically possible.

This led to a different approach to my practice. Instead of trying to get into the poses at any cost (my ego loves beautiful poses!), I did what I could. And here’s the difference: I turned towards the parts of my body that hindered the poses. For example, in Trikonasana (or Triangle pose), I noticed that my mind assumed the stiffness was in my hamstrings, but when I really paid attention to my body, I noticed that the stiffness was actually in my calf, so I went into my calf and focused there. I felt the stiffness. I got curious about it. Every day, I would greet it to see how it felt, to see if anything had shifted. With that focus, I didn’t even notice the shape of my poses. They didn’t matter. I began to look forward to greeting those places in my body.

As I continued this practice of turning towards the stiffest part, my rudimentary yoga practice gradually transformed into something familiar – my old yoga practice. While I was looking the other way, out of the blue, I could do a pose that had not been available to me at all a month earlier.

Today, you would not be overly impressed with my yoga practice. It’s still in its infancy. And my point in telling you this is not really about my yoga practice. It’s about the practice of turning towards versus turning away.

In my yoga practice, I turned towards what was limiting me. Instead of my old way of forcing things and struggling to get into a pose and being resentful of the limits of my body, and trying to force my way through them as quickly as possible, I focused on the very thing that blocked me, that held me back, that kept me stuck.

I turned towards, instead of turning away. I slowed it way down, and did it with compassion and curiosity and gentleness. I did it without an agenda, without ego (okay, maybe a little bit of ego). In doing that, I unlocked something. I focused on what wasn’t working, and stayed with it. I felt the pain. I went into it, gently, a little bit each day. Over time, my body responded. It felt safe and held. It began to trust me. I began to trust me.

So, here’s the question for you: Where in your life or in your work, do you turn away from that which is limiting you? Where do you notice a familiar ache, or pain, or anxiety and say, “Nope”? When you do that, what is your go-to strategy? Do you make progress or do you get stuck in a loop? Are you coping or are you creating?

What if you could gently, compassionately turn towards? Does that sticky part hold the wisdom you’ve been seeking? Would that information help you unlock something in you? Would it help you get unstuck? What if everything you needed was right there and all you had to do was turn towards instead of away? What if this was the path to truly trusting yourself?

If you’re struggling in your work or in your life right now, could this practice help? To that end, I created a video that explains how to use Moving Towards vs. Moving Away as a life guidance system. It’s an easy-to-follow system that helps you ask good questions of yourself. It’s part of my Self-Care Tools for Troubled Times kit. Or, if it feels right to do so, you can Ask Me Anything and, together we can talk about what’s getting in your way, create some clarity around it, so you can find your way forward again.

Even in troubled times, we can find our way.