aches and pains

A sore neck. A sore knee. A sore foot. Everything, it seems, is aching. I hurt my right knee years ago. It a permanent pain, a sharp reminder that I can’t quite move the way that I’d like to. I can no longer do the hour-long runs every day that I did throughout my twenties. My beloved hound Arlo and I had a standing 4 pm date in the woods—the woods of Michigan, the woods of Massachusetts, the woods of Connecticut, the woods of North Carolina. Sometimes we had a guest in tow—a boyfriend, an Elena, a perambulating visitor. Mostly it was just the two of us. For years we would part ways at the trailhead and I’d then spend the better part of an hour trying to find that irascible dog to get back in the car and head home. In later years I found myself taking the lead, slowing a bit and waiting for my panting pal to catch up. By the time Arlo died—almost two years ago—I was ready to give my running shoes a break. Or really, my back and my knee were ready for me to them a break.

I started practicing yoga around the time I met Josh. I have a lot to say about my transition to yoga—and this moment isn’t the right one—but it was swift and compelling, the result of an intensely committed teacher in Carrboro who has changed more than one body and certainly more than one life. When I moved to Philadelphia, I worried that I wouldn’t be able to afford yoga, but I stretched my tiny budget because it seemed essential. I practiced at a studio near my apartment for seven or eight months—in which time I finally mastered several inversions and got a bunch stronger—until just before Christmas, but then I just stopped going. I could no longer locate a desire to practice. I was exhausted after work and committing to yoga meant that I had absolutely no free time. So I joined a gym and started running and lifting weights again. I liked how easy it was to go in, run for 20 minutes, do a dozen squats, sit up fifty times, and leave. I liked that I wasn’t being asked to examine my soul. I liked that I wasn’t forced to slow down. I liked that I didn’t have to breathe or think or relax in any prescribed way. I knew that I was, in some weird way, regressing, but I just needed to run.

But now, five months and four injuries later, I’m sore. I’m stiff. My neck aches. My foot kills. My knee is getting worse. I’m not sleeping as well. My panic is starting to come back.

I think I might need to reexamine my choices. I think it might be time to return to yoga. I’m not sure what this will look like, but I think it’s time. And isn’t it a fine thing that my other houndish pal, the downward dog, will meet me there?