Ugh. Late night. (Change #1: deciding if I want to be in a relationship where I am not met halfway. Answer: No.)

I let myself sleep in till 7:30, a gift, because for the past several Mondays, I have had to be up at 4:45am to make it to my ingratiatingly long shift at Stanford Hospital for my clinical rotations. But now those 13-hour days are over for a while. Thank goodness!

My to-do list today is ridiculously long (paper to write, grant application due, meeting in SF this afternoon, lecture this evening), and I felt really impatient at the beginning of my practice this morning. It’s perhaps not wise to start a practice wanting to just “get through” it. But yoga is good to me, and I stuck with it. Sure enough, somewhere about ten minutes into it and going into Warrior I, I felt myself give in.

Ahh.

In life, giving in is not my strong point, lol. I can be as stubborn and tenacious as a rottweiler. In yoga, though, giving in allows for receiving, for a beautiful melding of relaxing and settling into an edge that opens and strengthens rather than causes pain. And that’s what happened in the Warrior pose. I sank, and my energy completely shifted. I really enjoyed the rest of the practice, despite being a teensy bit sore in my legs from yesterday. I’ll probably be a little sore tomorrow, too, because of some planks and extra long dogs, but it’s always worth it.

Thanks to everyone’s discussions on music yesterday, I listened to a portion of Tori Amos’ Night of Hunters album during my yoga. Gawd I love that album. So incredibly empowering, and the music rocks, without actually rocking. If you aren’t familiar with the album, do check it out. Here is one of my favorites. It’s the one I listen to when I feel myself faltering a little.

http://grooveshark.com/#!/s/Fearlessness/4bGPHq?src=5

Namaste, my dear yoga friends.