The most important lesson I can teach you (but will you listen?)

This morning I decided to do something different in yoga class.  Unfortunately, only one of my yogi moms was the beneficiary of this exercise since the school’s delayed opening (yes, more snow!) sent everyone’s schedules into a tailspin.  But I have decided that as a yoga instructor, running/triathlon coach and health coach, it is the most important lesson I can attempt to teach.  It’s a lesson that is not limited to one’s yoga practice, but rather, it can, in fact MUST, be applied to one’s running, triathlon, parenting, career, really anything in life.  So since you weren’t in my class this morning, here you go.

You may be familiar with my smilepacing philosophy.  Basically, I believe that whether you are training for a race or competing in one, you need to smilepace.  We are so dominated by numeric gauges in our lives, and in training and racing this shows up in the form of heart rate monitors, stopwatches, splits, calories burned, lactic threshold, Personal Records, finish time, age group placement, pounds/inches lost, time spent in training, etc.  You need to have an engineering degree to keep it all straight.  In fact, many triathlon coaches are engineers as their day job. 

When I trained for my first triathlon, my coach, an awesome guy and coach, figured out all the numbers for me and every Sunday he’d email me the weekly plan, with all the numbers he’d figured out.  Yes, he’s an engineer.  I paid him to do all the calculations that to my Big Picture brain are the equivalent of liquid Ambien.  But then I realized that especially come race day, I have no interest in looking at my watch at each mile marker to see if I’m at the right speed.  Nor did I want to be glancing down at my watch to see if my heart rate was correct.  I mean, if I was going at the speed that felt right to me, if I was pacing myself according to the joy I felt at being able to do what I was doing, and was capable of smiling at fellow competitors and generous volunteers, surely I was doing the right pace, and my heart wasn’t going to explode?  Thus, smilepacing became my strategy.

I knew that smilepacing was something that could (and I would argue, should) be practiced in more than one’s swimming, biking and running.  I love to have fun.  If something’s not fun, I want out.  So if I think of parenting, housework, volunteer and paid work – if something isn’t fun, then I don’t want to do it.  Unfortunately I’m not rich enough to pay someone else to take care of the drudgery, so on a daily basis I do have to engage precious time doing stuff like scrubbing toilets, putting away laundry, mopping floors, refereeing domestic disputes, preparing meals the under-5 ft crew will certainly whine about.  That’s life.  But there are so many things in life we can choose.  Who our friends are.  How we make money.  How we help our community.  How we react to things we can’t choose. 

This brings me to today’s yoga lesson.  I started off by reading an excerpt from this brilliant book I’m studying, Yoga as Medicine: The Yogic Prescription for Health & Healing, by Timothy McCall, M.D.  I read this section aloud, Trying Too Hard:

Students often push to achieve the outward form of an asana – trying to emulate their peers or a photo from a magazine – even when their body and breath are telling them they aren’t ready yet.  That is not a balanced action, not tuning in.  It’s imposing something from the outside.  Viniyoga teacher and bodyworker Leslie Kaminoff says that achieving the so-called classical form of a posture is simply not realistic for many people.  Due to anatomical variations, yoga poses readily done by some people are simply impossible for others.  He says, “some people unnecessarily torture themselves over their inability to perform certain asanas without realizing that it’s something inherent in their body proportions or shape.”  If you have thick arms or legs, or if your limbs are short in proportion to your trunk, e.g., you may never be able to clasp your hands behind your back in certain twists, or thread one leg behind the other in Eagle pose.  Trying to make the impossible happen is a setup for frustration and injury.  If you find yourself discouraged, that, too, offers a chance to build awareness through self-study.  Why, you might ask, are you so worried about how far you go into a pose?  Is it about how you look?  Do you feel competitive with others?  Such concerns have nothing to do with real yoga and they can undermine its healing power.  Far more important than outward form, Leslie believes, is whether, as a result of your yoga, you are able to breathe more effectively or move around in a more pain-free way.

Generally, in any yoga pose you are holding for more than a few seconds, you want to move into the pose until you encounter the first resistance to further motion.  At that point you should stop and breathe slowly, deeply, and smoothly.  After a short while, something may release, signaling that it is okay to move more deeply into the pose.  This process can be repeated several times.  Yogis refer to this as working or playing “the edge.”  The resistance to movement often comes from muscles that reflexively tighten to prevent injuries.  The more quickly and forcefully you move, the more likely the muscle will contract and frustrate your efforts.  It’s one of your body’s natural protective mechanisms.  If you try to force your way through that resistance, you may tear muscle fibers.  If you breathe and soften, you may find unexpected opening.

(p. 92-3)

A few of the women I’ve been training have been afflicted by injuries.  I suppose this doesn’t reflect well on me as, well, I am after all supposed to be guiding them as they walk, run, high-and-low plank.  I probably should have read the above excerpt at the first class, and had each participant swear to me that she would adhere to its message.  Alas, I can’t control what people do, especially during the 165 hours each week that they are not under my tutelage.  Smilepacing, or breathpacing, does not come naturally especially in a culture that reveres people who go to any extreme in order to “succeed.” 

I realized about a week ago that it’s now spring, and triathlon season will be upon us in 2.5 months or less.  I have been in the pool once this year, on my bike twice, and haven’t run further than six miles at a time.  The only bricks in my life have been the bran muffins I made the mistake of baking last week – forget bike-to-run (“brick”) workouts.  Not because I don’t feel like it, but because I spend a lot of time training others.  And yet as I was thinking this over, about my lack of serious training, and what effect it may be having on my fitness level, I also thought about the fact that six days every week, I am working with beginner runners, beginner walkers, beginning yogis.  I am helping them to discover the joy of going out for a jog at 6am in 30 degree weather while the moon is still out and the family is asleep.  The satisfaction of realizing that a yoga pose you couldn’t do only last week is actually almost comfortable today.  So, I could be pounding the streets working on that 7:30 10k pace, or shaving 3 seconds off my 100 yd swim, or wearing down my bike’s rear tire on the trainer.  But that wouldn’t be smilepacingâ to me.  That would be doing what Dr. McCall suggests above, when he encourages self-study.  Of course, it is great to push yourself and I abhor mediocrity or the long-term status quo.  I see every day as a chance to improve as an athlete, a mother, a wife, a dog owner, a spiritual being, a coach, photographer, friend… I suppose it all boils down to intention.  It’s important to ask yourself, why am I doing this?  Why is this so important to me?  Am I going faster than my coach suggested, because it makes me feel more successful?  Because I need to prove something to myself – or to someone else?  Can I go out there for a jog and not take a watch with me, just go – or is this too uncomfortable for me?  And if so, why?  Smilepacing (or breathpacing) is not license to be a slacker, to stop challenging yourself, to settle for less than you’re capable of doing.  All it is, is figuring out what feels right for your body and your psyche, and then using that as your gauge to measure your pace.  Remember:  “if you breathe and soften, you may find unexpected opening.”