Yesterday during my yoga class the teacher noted that downward dog was a restful pose. I inhaled and settled deeper into the pose, and thought ‘Yep.” She continued to say that often in the beginning it does not feel restful because a lot is happening in the pose and the body must get organized around that in order to rest. And it is so true. In downward dog, and in life.

I remember when I re-dedicated myself to a daily yoga practice six years ago, I had a frozen shoulder and couldn’t straighten both of my arms above my head. And the pressure on my shoulders and wrists was very challenging (almost excruciating!).  I had the shortest down dog possible. And I went into child’s pose to keep myself going.

But I did keep going. In spite of my mind telling me that it was not safe for you to do this because of the pain. In spite of my mind telling me that I looked stupid for going into child’s pose ALL the freakin time. In spite of my anxiety level spiking every time I knew I would need to take the pose. I kept reminding myself that I was doing it to feel better. And this was part of the process.

I kept on. Mostly with being as gentle with myself as I could without letting me stay at home in bed. I talked to my teachers so that they knew I was not slacking off. And I observed.

Observation has become my best friend in yoga. I began to observe how the three second down dog became five seconds. And how my wrists screamed a bit less than they had the week before. I observed how I actually had more forearm strength and a bit less flab. I slowly saw my arms lift higher over my head, like a centimeter at a time. And I celebrated these tiny little milestones with myself often. My own little party, because I was just a tiny bit better than I had been the week before.

Now when I go to a yoga workshop and the teacher uses downward dog as a posture to teach us about our alignment and how we reach for structural “perfection” in that pose, I remember myself. I have reached structural perfection for my body more than a thousand times doing downward dog. It has looked a thousand times incrementally different, because my body has opened, closed, loosened, tightened, lightened and softened in so many ways. And now I can settle into that perfection of the moment and rest. And breathe.

Off the mat, of course the translation is more subtle. But still the same. If am deliberate and observe small changes each day, they begin to add up. And yes, there are setbacks and meanderings, but still an observer can still notice the changes settling in, organizing themselves to give us more strength or patience or tenacity to move onward. Those too are victories. And are well worth celebration.

So take some time, wherever you are beginning, to observe the place. So you can offer yourself celebration for the changes that happen once you begin.

Waves. They are part of the cycles of life. Water, sound, light, energy. There are swells, crests and dissolutions, chaos, troughs and stillness in every aspect of our lives.  And it seems that different people fear and embrace different parts of the wave cycle. It is stillness that scares the crap out of me. Historically, I have feared that stillness is a step toward stagnation. Stagnation leads to suffocation. And that slope (which I have always thought of as very slippery) sends me into flight mode so easily.

Growing up, I had a strong sense that things did not change, that I was destined for a life of stagnation. I was scared of not having experiences, of not being different from the young girl I was then. I feared missing out on some unknown that I knew, but didn’t know, existed somewhere in the world. I was scared to death of suffocating in something that never changed.

I rebelled in many typical teenager ways. I resisted routines. I swore I’d never repeat anything that I grew up with. I hated anything that seemed remotely still or felt stagnant. I solicited chaos, just to be sure that things would not settle. I always worked more than one job. I kept busy. Too busy. Because to settle was the first step to suffocation.

As anyone with migraine knows, having a routine is important. Establishing and documenting patterns is important in becoming healthy, and being consistent is a key ingredient to management. And sure enough, my migraines were part of my chaos. I have tried hundreds of remedies over the years, documented off and on (more off) my migraine cycle, but my resistance to being still remained a constant. At my most chaotic periods in life, it is no surprise that my migraines were at their most crushing and painful. Certainly, they were like waves, crushing my head, my energy, and sometimes my life. Over the years I used many things to live through that chaos of crushing waves in of head and body, but mostly I used pain killers. My body used depression, and anxiety to help me weather it. Not at all reasonable or healthy choices,  but my fear of stillness was still deeper than my fear of ill-health. So I kept on.

Then our family home burned. I left my job (where I overworked in too much chaos). I took care of my husband and son, and the re-building of our home. And during that time, I sat with stillness. The house sat empty for more than a month, burned. Pieces of the roof flapped in the winter winds and bits of the house blew across the open space. It simply sat there while the insurance company went through its process. In that chaos of a house-fire, there was stillness. And it was heartbreaking, don’t get me wrong. It was gut wrenching to experience our charred home and belongings. But I sat, and waited. And processed with my family the change that was before us. And for the first time in my life (I’m pretty sure) I  did nothing. I hugged my kid. I cried with my husband.

Those six months, while we rebuilt our home, were not stagnate. But I was at a stand still. And that stillness, while scary as hell, did not make me stagnate. It did not suffocate me. It did not make me less of a person. And that is how I became acquainted with stillness.

On my yoga mat, I still try to cultivate that feeling in me, that stillness even in discomfort. To settle deep into a pose that is not so comfortable and find a place of peace with it. Because yoga is the waves. It is the highs, lows, crests and dissolution. It is the momentum building anticipation, and the resting on the other side. It is the discomfort and the comfort. And it has helped me to remember the necessity of all the bits of the waves, and even go deeper, to where the swells are bigger and clearer because the water is deeper and bluer.

And yoga has encouraged me to seek a truce with myself and my migraine. To go deeper with myself and understand the more subtle energies that affect my neurology, and give them space to be within me. It has encouraged me to have faith in all parts of the waves and experiment with settling into those parts too find out if they support my health. I continue to learn that I have some interaction with the frequency of waves depending on how deep or shallow I choose to be in my life. And that really changes everything.

Ups and downs happen. There is no changing that. But how and where I interact with those waves is a choice I can make. I can also accept and embrace the waves as they are, knowing that it is the routine of life. Downs are part of ups, and crests are part of dissolution. Frequency changes with depth. Mostly. The swells, the crests, the chaos, the troughs and the journey between them all begets fullness. And to fear or deny yourself any part of the wave is to deny the entire experience of being.

Without contraries there is no progression. — William Blake, Marriage of Heaven and Hell