Today, I started the real cleanse part of my cleanse. I ordered Healthforce Nutritionals Level 3 Cleanse, because I love the company and their products. It is all stuff that I am familiar with and I know that they use the most high quality ingredients and processes. There isn’t a lot to do but at the same time there is a lot to do. Upon waking, drink this, then don’t eat for this amount of time. With breakfast take this and this and drink this. Then wait one hour, and drink this, and so on for the rest of the day.

I normally don’t eat anything before I go to yoga, just have some water and tea. Lately, I have been frequenting a 10:15am yoga class, so I in order to make all of these cleanse checkpoints I woke up at 6:30am to get started with drinking this and taking that. I honestly forgot that on this type of cleanse, you want to make sure that a toilet is quickly accessible. I started to make up that I was not going to be able to leave the house at all. Was this just an excuse of laziness, to escape having to bike to yoga? I know that yoga will be amazing. It will open up lots of stuckness that is around without me even knowing it. I am going to yoga.

Then my mind spun to the weekend. I am volunteering as support for the Kindred Spirits workshop. How am I going to be able to do this? How am I going to take all of this stuff all day long, while I am there? I will have to take all of it with me!??!??!! Do I need to stop the cleanse for those days? Do I just stop right now and re-start it on Monday? What am I going to do? Ok, there is always going to be something, if I stop now and re-start on Monday there will be something next week that I will want to go to. Am I just going to lock myself in my house for the entire week? No, I will do this cleanse now. I really want to do it. I can do it now. I will take all of this stuff with me. Its easy, Tricia, it will work out fine. I can do the cleanse and be there as support, all I have to do is tell myself that I am doing it, that I can do it, and it will all work.

I hop on my bike for yoga and feel good but not completely excited to be going to yoga. I am talking myself into it. When the doors to the room open, I choose a spot in the back in case I need to run to the Ladies Room. One of my favorite teachers at this studio is leading the class today. I don’t remember why she is one of my favorites, but I am happy to have her leading me today.

The class starts and within the first three minutes I want to get up and leave. Really, I want to walk out the door and go home. I feel okay physically. It is not that I need to run to the bathroom, or feel nauseous or weak. I feel fine physically, not amazing, but fine. I am just mentally not available. I am resistant. I am being un-coachable. I can barely hear what the teacher is guiding me to do because my monkey brain is so loud. There is all sorts of chatter happening. I am planning out what I am going to eat and drink today. I remember that I have a new movie from Netflix that I want to watch. I am writing this blog in my head, while moving from cat to cow.

I get present to this monkey mind that I have right now and remember to concentrate on my breathing. Have I been breathing? Obviously I have been breathing, I am alive, but have I been using my Ujjayi breathing? Have I been flowing with my breath? I honestly have no idea. Okay, so start now.

I am moving and really trying to stay focused on my breathing, but I am still being totally un-coachable. I even start to judge the teacher for not guiding my breath. I think, “ Well, no wonder I am not sticking to my breathing, she isn’t giving breathing cues. What is wrong with these teachers? Why don’t they give breathing cues?” I am letting up all sorts of anger and judgments come up for various teachers that I have gone to in the past 6 months. I am just judging away, as I am practicing vinyasa flow yoga. I get present to myself, right there in the class, to my judgments, to my uncoachability and smile to myself. I smile because I have totally caught myself and I am now going to breathe through it for real. I am back in the class. I am allowing myself to be led. I am allowing myself to be coached. I hear her giving breathing cues along with the transitions (she has been the whole time, I was just not listening). I coach myself to be open, to open myself up. I breathe deeper into the poses. I breathe into where discomfort shows up.

At the end of class, she guides us into double pigeon, a big hip opener. I have tight hips, so I am not able to go very deep, but I stick with it and stick with my breathing. I am 100% open to the pose and to what comes up. I flash back to how sitting in hip openers used to be so hard for me. I would fidget and come in and out of the pose, my body and mind screaming with discomfort, but not anymore. I am able to tap into that pain and discomfort, to accept it and know that it will pass.

This realization reminded me of a passage I read last year from the book After the Ecstasy, the Laundry titled Removing the Scales of the Body. One woman wrote “Only when I finally learned to let even the deepest pain be okay, and hold it with kindness, did it begin to release.”

After class, all is shiny and new again. I am confident that I will rock this cleanse and that I will be able to do all parts of it no matter where my days take me.  I am excited to see what will come up, now that I am creating this space for it to. I am cleansing it all.  I am open for coaching in all forms.