#OneWord365 Day One: Practice

It took me until 10PM to unroll my yoga mat today.

Maybe it's because I ate plenty of delicious Lebanese food at a late dinner/birthday party, so forward fold was giving me heartburn.

Maybe it's because I kept getting distracted from my pranayama: by Jaymz, Eddie, Joel, Daniel, Facebook, that strange noise coming from downstairs...

Maybe it's because I've been so sick lately and I'm still getting that burning water-up-the-nose sensation when I invert my head, which gives downward-facing dog too much bark.

Maybe the real reason is that my biggest fear is not actually that I can't do it, but that I can.

The word I've chosen for 2015 is practice: show up on the (metaphorical and literal) mat just as I am and try. Then show up the next day and do it again. Practice. Keep at it. Show up. Practice.

I've realized fairly recently that I'm not ever going to be "done," that there will always be more things to do, more growth to work through, and more goals to reach for. I don't know about you, but focusing on a goal doesn't feel very satisfying to me. Most of life is lived in the gritty and the mundane, in the day-to-day and minutia. A milestone only comes along once per mile, but how many steps does it take in between? How many breaths? How many passing thoughts? Life for me is about the process, not the product. It's at least as much about how an action is performed as it is about the result of that action. It's about the practice.

So I unrolled my yoga mat at 10PM today! I showed up, and that feels amazing.