This is the story I know well.

One of my favorite yoga teachers once told me that, in yoga, we all become story-tellers.

In class recently, as she strode among our mats, pressing her flat palms against the rise of our backs, pulling at our upturned hips, smoothing the line of our spines, she said, “Thank you for coming and sharing your story with me tonight.”

We rippled, shuffled, a murmur of limbs adjusting, of lungs filling—we weren’t speaking.  What story-sharing was she talking about?

“This is the story I know well,” she continued.  ”The story of your arrival, the story of your work, the story of your yoga.”

It was such a fitting observation, considering I have been thinking of my yoga story a lot lately, largely because I just finished Benjamin Lorr‘s “Hell-Bent: Obsession, Pain, and the Search for Something Like Transcendence in Competitive Yoga.”  Part-memoir, part-research, and part-expose, “Hell-Bent” tells quite a story about Ben’s personal journey through discovering and practicing yoga, as well as many other stories about Bikram Choudhury, about other yogis (professionals and average practitioners), about Bikram’s teacher training program, about extreme back-bending, about yoga-induced weight loss, about science and physiology and philosophy and the deep, confusing, fascinating history of yoga itself.

Even if you aren’t a yogi, the average reader would likely appreciate the humor, candor, strangeness, and humanity of Ben’s tale and of the yoga world he picks apart and analyzes.

I admit, however, now that I’ve finished it, that I have struggled to pinpoint exactly how I felt about the book.  Did I love it (hundreds of pages devoted to my yoga!)?  Did I hate it (learning truths about people in my yoga community, truths that I don’t care to know)?  Why did I blow through some parts and struggle reading through other parts?

I was impressed at the effort, of course.  (Bravo, Ben!)  A bit jealous of the byline, the yogi-turned-published-author?  Absolutely.  Entertained and educated throughout, indeed.  Inspired to haul my own knotted body into the hot room?  Yes, a thousand times over.

But…what about the story itself?

That has been my struggle.  And, I’ve finally found my answer.

Here’s the thing:

We each have our yoga story.

Many of them start the same:   We wandered/stumbled/were dragged into a hot room, usually by someone who loves us, someone who knew the yoga would work on our tired bodies, our battered hearts.  The first class passed in a haze of sweat, nausea, emotion, frustration, amazement, confusion, terror, humor, maybe even humiliation—largely because we watched, in stunned wonder, as the yoga waged war on our big, old American egos and won.  We left swearing we’d never return.

Later, we felt transformed.

Later still, we did return.  Whether it took one day or 100 days or even a whole year. We came back, maybe to a different studio, maybe with a different companion, maybe even more tired and more battered than we were the first time around.  But, we came back to the yoga.  And kept coming back.

And then, our mats became churches, our holy place of communion with our true self.  Our practices became our best friends: we are wholly devoted to one another.  Our teachers morphed into prophets.  We each became willing, eager, dutiful students.  The studios shifted into homes, communities, places of refuge.

The yoga takes hold, and we hold it back, and we become obsessed with breaking down, understanding, knowing, memorizing, and honoring every last little detail.  It is one of the greatest love stories I’ve heard told over and over and over again.

Throughout the six-plus years of my own practice, I have read countless blogs, books, essays, magazines, and articles about this one subject.  It astounds me, even now, that so many people—present self included!—are so eager to talk and write about their yoga, “get” it, analyze it, share its teachings, praise the lessons we’ve learnt from it.

And for what?  Why?  (Side note:  the irony of this question is not lost on me, given I’ve devoted nearly five year’s worth of blog posts to own my yoga practice.)

Especially given yoga is, I think, an incredibly intimate form of therapy, both physical and emotional.  A dedicated yoga practice is grueling, messy, difficult, wondrous, and profoundly life-changing.  Old injuries resurface, old hurts bruise anew, a past long buried suddenly and completely cracks through the walls we built to protect ourselves from those old wars, those old ways.  On our mats, we can’t hide; we face and work through it all.  (Although “Hell-Bent” tends to focus more on the physical effects of the yoga, the moments when he touches on the emotional blowbacks of a particularly intense class or workshop are incredibly touching and real.)

Why are we so inclined to share the arduous steps of that journey, that transformation?  Why do we ask others to bear witness?  Are we seeking validation?  Are we seeking praise?

Are we so enamored with our yoga, so enthralled by our practice, that we’re blinded by our adoration, our pride?  We are in love—with this yoga, with this new self!  And we want all the world to see!  Is that it?

“Hell-Bent” is an attempt to answer all sorts of questions, about Bikram yoga, about yoga’s vast history and complex origins, about the author’s own skepticisms, about the actual physiological ramifications of doing 50 back-bends a day or logging 6+ hours in a room heated above 100 degrees.  The book also provides a rare inside look into the Bikram Yoga community through copious interviews, research, quotes, and first-hand experiences and, in doing so, validates that this yoga is powerful, yes, but power can lead to corruption, hatred, extreme and unhealthy behaviors.  I found these explorations interesting, if not a little overdone.  I appreciated Ben’s meticulous research.  I liked that he did answer a lot of questions—but also left a lot unanswered, unsaid, open to the reader’s own conclusions.  I applaud his honesty.  His writing strikes a nice balance between journalistic, comedic, and soulful.  And, throughout, his wit and willingness to poke fun at himself and at the yoga community he’s a part of helped buoy a narrative that, like many a yoga-memoir before it, could have started sinking onto the bottom shelf of the self-help aisle.

However, I realized, come the book’s end, that the one question that plagued me—the one question that has, over the last many months, swayed me away from this here blog—is:  So, what?

And what I mean by that is:

We each have our yoga story.  And no two are alike.

But why are we so compelled to tell them?

In the good moments, I found myself throughly engrossed in “Hell-Bent,” to the point I couldn’t put it down or couldn’t wait to get into the hot room to determine if I saw or felt my practice differently, based on what I’d read.

And, in other moments, it was as though I just left a tough yoga class, and I’m sitting outside the hot room, satisfied and satiated and utterly spent, grinning stupidly, sweat dripping from my ears and my fingertips, my mind empty, my skin tingling, and suddenly I hear people going on and on about how they hated *this* or *that* about the class or thought the room was just too damn hot or didn’t understand WHY they couldn’t talk to each other or couldn’t *believe* the X, Y, and Z of the yoga that I love and that has changed my life.  The yoga and the community that has, for the most part, treated me quite well.

It took me a long time (read: a lot of yoga) to understand that type of reaction wasn’t wrong or bad.  It was, quite simply, that man or woman’s individual experience.  It was, simply, his or her story, and it didn’t matter whether I agreed.

Ben’s story and the various stories he tells in his book are just that:  his.  And I have mine.  And you have yours.  And we all tell them differently.

None are right or wrong, better or worse, bigger or smaller, more or less justified at being told in the first place.  None are more or less deserving.  We can’t expect that every last story will resonate.  But, each should be respected.

It all comes back to the yoga, of course.   The point isn’t the story we’re telling (or selling).  In the same way that the point isn’t how deep you can curl your spine in your backbend or how high you can kick your leg in dancer or how lightly you leap into chaturanga dandasana.  The point isn’t how much weight you lose, how cute your clothes are, whether the teacher knows your name, or how wet your mat is by class end.

The point is that you showed up.  That you came back, despite fears, against reservations, a pebble of hope caught in your shoes.

The point is that you arrived honestly, that you bared your blackest, bloodiest demons and your best, truest self and didn’t turn either away, that you opened your heart again—so much so, in fact, that you fell in love, over and over.

And who, really, doesn’t want to tell that story to anyone willing to listen?

On thinking in stories.

The other day, while nursing my body through a soggy Bikram yoga class, the teacher said, mid-dialogue, “It’s the mind that gets in the way of absolutely everything—even breathing.”

I couldn’t help but smile.  To think:  our mind might stop us from doing the very thing we most need to do in order to survive, all because, in that one, heightened moment, we are uncomfortable or scared or excited or nervous or trying too hard or not trying enough.

She then told us not to mind our minds for the rest of class.

This, of course, proved difficult.

The worst thing about not getting to the yoga studio on a regular basis is that while your body might remember and embrace the poses, your brain has a much harder time sinking back into that wonderfully silent, relaxed, meditative state of being that comes hand-in-hand with a daily yoga practice.  Instead, you get a brain that’s alternating between shouts of “Come on!  You used to be able to go way deeper and stretch way farther!” and cries of “Ouuccch!  No more!” and sighs of “Just breathe, relax, let go, the only way out is through.”

To say yoga is a workout—mentally and physically—is an understatement.

I certainly tried, though, I promise you.  I always try.

Body over mind.  Breath over mental beatings.  Letting go of thoughts rather than chasing them.  Stillness over agitation.

And then, as we were nearing the end of our spine-strengthening series, and as I laid on my stomach, my cheek pressed against my towel, sweat dripping down my forehead and off my fingertips, I looked across at the man laying next to me.  Normally, I am diligent in keeping my eyes fixed firmly on the corner of my towel so as to stay focused on my breath and my body versus the sights and sounds of everyone else in the room.  But, my mind that night—it wanted nothing of focus.

My gaze landed on this man’s shoulder blade.  More specifically, a marking on this man’s right shoulder blade.

And suddenly, I was spinning a short story idea in my head, of a woman laying in bed with a man whom she’d married quickly, hastily, back in the days when men and women only met a few times before deciding to settle down together, and when one morning she shyly asks him, this sullen stranger of a husband, about the scar—circular and dark, centered on his right shoulder blade, the one closest to her when they laid atop the sheets at night, him resting on his stomach, her curled on her side, the antique Salisbury clock ticking the minutes of silence past from its perch on the bedside table, and all the stories they had not yet told one another crowding the room like hauntings, like ghosts—his unexpectedly upbeat answer made her laugh, because he replied, “It’s not a scar, sweetie pie; it’s a beauty mark.”

And then I remembered the story idea I’d fiddled with a few nights before, about a woman who works at a prison and is responsible for preparing the last meal for inmates on Death Row.  What meals did they request?  How did she prepare them—with kindness or with cruelty?  Did they eat alone, or did she keep them company?  Did the men (never women) actually eat the food, and did they compliment her cooking, and was she ever saddened to see her culinary masterpieces slipping past the lips of crooks, rapists, and murderers?  When she went home at night and stepped into the shower, was she washing off the grease of the skillets or the guilt of existence in a life crowded with crime and death?

Then, my mind jumped to the conversation I had with a yoga teacher recently, in which we were talking about my lack of motivation to crank my rusty yoga practice into the robust, invigorating practice it was in months past, and he told me, “You know how to do this. You have been here before,” and I nearly burst into tears, because that one phrase could be applied to so many things in my life lately, and because my gut response of “I remember—and I don’t know if I have what it takes to return anymore” sounded so defeatist, so resigned, and made me wonder if I have given up in other areas, too.

All this in the span of about 20 seconds, give or take.

Yes, this is how my mind works.  I think in stories.  For better or worse.

On my way home that night, my inability to successfully follow my teacher’s instruction nagged at me.  Sure, I’d worked hard, and sure, I’d sweated quite a bit, and yes, I stayed faithful to my practice by breathing through discomfort, pushing when I knew I could, easing up when I felt overwhelmed, and taking every pose step by step, motion by motion, slowly, carefully, bravely.  I’d held nothing back.  But, I’d thought…a lot.  I hadn’t let go of, well, hardly anything.

Maybe, though, we don’t always need to let go.  (Gasp.)

Those story ideas?  I should cling tight to them and make them more than ideas.

And that wave of anxiety and self-doubt I’d felt?  I shouldn’t toss it aside; in fact, I should examine it closer.  How else do you understand and overcome something?

And the prideful satisfaction I enjoyed when I climbed to my knees and began the last breathing exercise and stared at myself in the mirror, delighting in my bright eyes, my red cheeks, my shining body?  I do not want to let that image or that delight or that unwavering acceptance of myself go anywhere.

Yoga, like life, is never about one thing.  It’s a wonderfully complex composition of contrasting elements, both internal and external.

Perhaps yoga, like life, is mind and body.

Letting go and holding on.

Ideas and creation.

And the stories I keep trying to tell are found somewhere in the middle.

On projects.

Even though it is a Saturday, and no one reads blogs on Saturdays—especially not my blog, because, well, few people read my blog anymore anyway—I wanted to note my new project.  Specifically, my new writing project.

I can’t say the project is all that original.  But, sometimes originality is overrated.  There isn’t always a need to recreate the wheel.

I have long been saying that I want/need to get myself writing again.  Any kind of writing.  Journaling, blogging, essay-ing, e-mailing, putting all the stories and characters milling around in my head onto the page instead of leaving them to wonder aimlessly from corner to corner of my mind.

Lots of bloggers do writing “challenges.”  I think there’s even a blogging organization/group that organizes whole months devoted to daily blogging.  And although I’m not looking at this as a blogging challenge, per se, every book-on-writing that I’ve ever read has said how you just need to write every day.  It doesn’t matter if what you write is drivel or genius.  Just write.

So, rather than pay hundreds of dollars to take another writing class, I figure I have this here blog. Sluggish and out of shape as it may be, here it is, ready and rising to the occasion.

Just write, Hannah.

This September, I will.

I can’t promise any of what I cobble together will be any good.  But, I want to commit myself to sitting down each day and pulling together whatever comes to me, whether it’s just a few sentences, skit-scattered thoughts, fragments of ideas, meme’s, poems, or fully formed stories.

Some days, it may just be one sentence.  And that’s okay with me.  My goal is to write, and hopefully write something, however small, of substance.  The length is of no consequence.

In the old days, when I blogged consistently enough to have a following and have regular commenters and regular readers, here is where I would throw out the: “Hey!  Send me ideas!  Send me writing prompts!  What do you want to read about?  What should I write about?!”

Those days are long past.  (Although, of course, thoughts/ideas are welcome!  In other words: mi madre, chime in here and tell me what tu y mi papa would like to read.)

And that’s okay.

Like most things in my life lately, I am doing this—I am committing to this initiative, this diligent effort, this singular focus—for me, and only me.

Having you, readers, along for the journey is just the cherry on the sundae.

I did it for me.

Self-promotion is an art I have yet to master.

I don’t say this out of a false sense of modesty.  Really.  I promise I haven’t shunned the practice of self-promotion based on judgment or principle.  The whole “tooting my own horn” and “being my own loudest advocate” and “putting myself before others”—I understand the value in these acts.  I do.

And I fully acknowledge my failure.  Actually, people have flat out told me this is an area I need to “work on.”

Ironically, I’m a great self-cheerleader…internally.

I just haven’t ever been very good at tugging on someone else’s shirt sleeve and saying, “Hey.  Look at me.  I’m a god damn ROCK STAR, and you should notice.  And, if you haven’t?  Well.  Sit back.  Let me show you.  Let me show you.”

Why?  I hesitate to point to a lack of self-confidence, because on the whole, I consider myself a confident woman.  I know I have strengths, insights to offer, love to give, kindness to bestow, ideas to share, and so on.  I know I am smart and good and worthy.  I know I am strong and athletic, womanly and pretty.  I don’t doubt these things.

I just bristle at the idea of having to explicitly outline my winning qualities to another person.  Personally or professionally.  (Queue the discomfort in writing online dating profiles, cover letters, self-evaluations, applications…)

Don’t the actions, the end result, the person as a whole, tell a more compelling and interesting story than the words anyway?

I’d like to think so.  And, in an ideal world, perhaps this would be the case.  But, we do not live in an ideal world.

In the past month, I have begun to realize, more and more, and with greater and greater clarity, that my mode of survival for the past year has been sitting back and letting others hold the reins of my life.  My mode of operation has, in fact, been the polar opposite of self-promotion or self-direction.

Sure, I will go and live with my sister and brother in law for an indefinite amount of time and live within the comfort and safety of another’s warm roof…without having to take responsibility for said roof.  Certainly, I will take a job I don’t necessarily want or enjoy and slog through 50+ or 60+ hour work weeks for month’s on end because it’s easier to follow the direction of others than it is to pave a direction of my own.  Yes, absolutely, I will let him dictate and define the parameters, however hurtful or unfulfilling, of our relationship—better that than lose him completely. And, surely, I will dutifully listen, patiently follow suit, follow orders, all to please and endear myself rather than look to protect and propel myself on my own, chosen course.

It’s frightening, really, how easy it is to settle oneself into the backseat.  Who needs a clear view or a strong hand on the wheel when you can simply let the road carry you—versus you making the turns and reverses and sudden departures from the map altogether?  Who needs to lead when others are so willing and eager to have you follow?

Let me tell you:  It is frighteningly easy.

Somewhat recently, a relationship with a man I cared for very much ended.  Our final conversation and the sudden reality that our time together was complete gutted me, for weeks.  Still, a small ache swells within me each time I think of him, of what could have been the us I’d wanted and fought for.  I didn’t realize or appreciate it then, but I see now that closing that one door quickly motivated me to close other doors, too.  Because ending that relationship was the first, real, tangible sense of self-directed progress I have felt in…a year?  Or more?

It motivated me to sign a lease to a new apartment.  (Yes, I’m moving…finally.)  It motivated me to pick up the phone and call a dear friend or two and have some long overdue conversations.  It propelled me to send away or throw away momentos, both sweet and sour reminders of him, that I had clung to—and now no longer need or want.  It has even helped me launch a new job search.  And begin a renewed effort to date, to dust off the shelves of my heart again.

Ultimately, I have captured and harnessed one of the ultimate tactics of self-promotion:  selfishness.

And, by selfishness, what I mean is this:  I did it for me.

Extremes of any kind are unproductive and usually destructive.  Selfishness is no different.  But, I know I have not been selfish enough these last few months.  I have not looked out for my best interests.  And I know that has been to my own detriment.  Personally and professionally.

I don’t intend to blaze down some self-indulged, “me, me, me only” path in the months aheads.  But, I do intend to put myself first:  in love, at work, in training for my triathlon and getting to yoga, in setting up my new home, and in putting my two feet squarely on the ground again and launching this new chapter of my life.

I intend to focus on the changes I plan to make for myself.

I intend to hope, whole-heartedly, for the future I want, while working doggedly on the today, my way—for me.

On going gray.

I always wondered what my reaction would be when I found my first gray.

Some friends told me they cried.  Others ran for the tweezers or immediately picked up the phone and booked an appointment with their hairdresser.  A guy friend of mine actually shaved his head.  And some didn’t do anything but shrug.

What, after all, is the big deal?

Throughout my childhood, my parents constantly reinforced the principle that I should “act my age.”  Sure, as a tortured teen-ager, it’s expected that you pine for the days of “When I grow up…”, and I was no different.  But, my parents were so insistent that I not try to act or live a life older than where I currently was.  Instead, they so encouraged the moment, the exact phase of childhood or adolecense or adulthood, I was currently in.

The dutiful daughter, I listened.  I complied.  And as I got older, I started taking their advice to mean “embrace your age.”

Be 13—obsessed with horses and friends and school and sports!  Be 18—on the cusp of college, scared and nervous and hopeful and courageous!  Be 22—biting the lip of the real world for the first time, boldly, bravely, hungrily!

Be 25—establishing a career, gaining professional confidence, building a network, breaking hearts and licking your own wounds, exploring cities, understanding the world.  Be a late 20-something—more grounded, more centered, more focused, more inclined to stay in and cook a nice dinner with friends than go out and further build the credit card debt.

Be a 30-something—to be honest, I am still figuring out what exactly this phase of life entails.

It is as though my parents really wanted to say to me: “Embrace your age, embrace wherever your life has led you up to this point. Because, eventually, you will understand the rush of time.”

Time has, of course, always rushed.  It’s just a matter of when you pick your head up and realize its frenzied passing and decide, right then and there, you don’t want to miss a single moment.  Suddenly, you wouldn’t dream of wishing you were any other age or in any other place, because you know, fully, how quickly it all changes anyway.  If anything, you start wishing you could hold time still.  Or, better yet, hold it back.

I had this realization in my late twenties, I think.  Around when I left Washington, DC for Boston, when I was 27.  When I decided I wanted to make great and exciting changes, and I was possibly losing the time and chance to do so.

And each year since then, time seems to have gained momentum on me.  It has become better conditioned.  The harder I try to stand in one place, the harder time pushes more efficiently and effectively to move me forward.

And now, at 31, leaning against the bathroom sink at 7:30 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, brushing my teeth and pulling my bed-tangled hair back into a ponytail and staring into the fogged mirror, I find one shockingly bright, shockingly white, shockingly wiry gray hair.

And I laughed.

I stood there, and I laughed.

And then I grabbed the Listerine, and then the face wash.  Downstairs, a pot of strong coffee brewed.  My stomach growled for breakfast.  I could hear my sister banging cupboards closed and my niece chattering and toddling from living room to kitchen to hallway to living room again, sometimes calling a hopeful, “Da da?!” up the stairs at me.  I began to hurry, anxious to go down and swoop her up and begin our Tuesday morning routine together.

A whole day awaited.  It didn’t even occur to me to stand there and commemorate and care about my discovery.

When your life starts to feel like it has a history—when you can sit back and know your stories fill chapters—perhaps it is natural to feel less inclined to pause and place meaning on everything.  Because you are older and wiser and better able to identify that some milestones (by societal standards) are merely passing moments in your own life.  What do they matter? Because, with time, you become better equipped at identifying the true moments to remember and record: the warm, wonderful smell of a child’s neck right before bedtime; the shiver of delight and the wave of comfort that never goes away when kissing the one you love; the length and strength of limbs freshly rinsed cleaned by yoga or running or swimming; the first taste of summer corn; a father’s hug; a mother bathing her 31-year-old daughter the day after she’s given birth to her first child; the smell of the ocean on your fingertips.

The nostalgic romantic in me constantly wants to place MEANING on EVERYTHING. But, that isn’t realistic.  That isn’t practical.  That kind of behavior isn’t, well, embracing my age.

I’m old enough, at 31, to know a gray hair isn’t a sign of anything other than biology and genetics playing its natural role.

Of course, I’m still young enough to want to document it.

Something tells me, though, that particular penchant of mine, that need to write it all down for memory’s safe-keeping, won’t fade with the onslaught of time or the phase of life through which I’m moving, no matter how old or how gray I get.