Plus ca change

I've been going to yoga a lot lately, and I feel changes happening in my body. The progress I began to feel last year in loosening my tight hamstrings continues. My hips continue to open, and my lower back feels more aligned. I attribute the changes not just to the physical exercise but to how I am feeling emotionally. I am letting go, and so my body follows (or perhaps, it's the other way round, my body is letting go and I am following).

My left leg in particular is loosening and tightening at the same time. For the first time in many of the poses, I am holding it locked and strong. It is a new feeling. These changes are not dramatic and they are not driven by external circumstances. I am not injured. I have not gained or lost weight. I am simply doing yoga, and by doing yoga I am changing.

I am finding that my ego is challenged by some of these changes. The shift from slightly bent knee to straight knee, from hip and quadricep almost parallel to the floor to parallel is having consequences on my ability to hold triangle pose. This has been a favorite pose, similar to warrior pose, and one that I have moved into easily since beginning yoga. Now, I am falling out of it, unable to stay balanced. Sometimes, my feet start to slip and I wonder if I have the inner thigh strength and the inner mental strength to keep holding the pose. Sometimes, I hold the pose. More often than I would like to admit, I put my hands down on the ground for respite. It is humbling to no longer be able to stay in a pose for the full sixty seconds. I imagine that the instructors think that I am wussing out for, in the past, I have always been able to hold the pose.

I realized that I was competent in the pose previously. Now I am on my way to a new strength and flexibility. To achieve this, I will fall out of poses. I will find new edges and limits. Internally generated change, simply to grow, seems difficult. I am asking myself to be resilient, to be comfortable with discomfort, to create new neurological pathways.

Many of my big life changes have had an external stimulus such as change of job or change in marital status. I am realizing that to make a big life change or to simply become unstuck requires a different strength when the motivation is internal. The change is incremental and almost unobservable until the accumulation results in a action that others perceive as change. Change is constant. Change is real. Plus ca change, plus ca change.