I started doing a yoga class/online challenge thing for the new year… to move and stretch my body and see if I can help get more flexible and less pain. It was hard. It was hard. My knees don’t bend the way they are meant to and my hands and arms are weak from arthritis and it was hard. I did the class as best I could making tons of modifications and I will continue on this challenge I guess but I am not in it to hurt myself either. Having fibromyalgia and arthritis means I live with a lot of pain. Pain that kind of floats about my body. Some days I feel great and others something, or everything, can hurt. If I feel good and I over do it I could trigger a flare and end up in more pain than just sore muscles from doing something new. It’s tricky because when I feel good I want to do so many things and then if I over do it I risk not being able to do anything for a week. So this yoga practice will be a challenge, I will not try to do what I know my body can’t do. I will hopefully gain some flexibility and maybe get to sit cross legged on the floor with ease but I won’t push my knees to places they can’t go and I won’t judge myself for it. I had my first knee surgery at 11 years old, another at 13 and then crashed my motorcycle and damaged it even further at 34 years old so there are limitations to what they can do and I must respect that. I guess for me this whole challenge thing is to give my body some respect and so it makes sense that there are 2 sides to that. Work it out to help move and be more flexible and also not work it so hard that I hurt myself.

So here at sit at the beginning of a new year and new practice teetering on this line of “work out but not too hard…feel some muscles pain but not too much” the worst feeling for me “Stick with it but don’t if you can’t” it’s so ambiguous and non committal and yet honest and real. If I can’t and I don’t allow myself room for that then I will be so mad at myself for failing.

Does any of this make any sense at all?