- COVID’s 4th Anniversary…
- To get back into yoga after a long COVID break, here’s my advice, as a professional yoga teacher.
- Read more from Sarah…
COVID’s 4th Anniversary…
Four years. A lifetime. The gaping chasm between what was and what is. My brain scrambles to remember, recollect, collect, conform, organize, to make it all make sense, stuff it all into a box somewhere and make it all go away. Simultaneously. To not just move on but move on as if COVID never happened. But it did. And I still haven’t fully wrapped my brain around the complexity of what happened and what it changed about how I live and what I expect out of life, forever.
Life now feels infinitely more precious and limited. Finding meaning and purpose and creating beauty every day feels so much more important. I am staunchly unwilling to live a small, predictable life.
This last year (February 2023-February 2024) has been the first in four where the chokehold COVID had on my whole being has loosened. I got laid off. I created. I wrote. I traveled. I had done these things since 2020, sure, but this was the first year where I felt at ease. I felt this sense of ease suffuse my skin and sink down deep into my very bones.
Four years. Four years of immense stress and existential dread, of worsening climate change, deadly floods and earthquakes, war and destruction. At the same time… Four years to buy a house, get engaged, live in Paris, run two successful Morocco retreats, (re)start French lessons, start two companies, teach at four yoga studios, frolic in the fields of Ireland, attend two dear friends’ weddings, go on two yoga retreats to Panama, and plan a wedding.
Life (the world) can be messy and violent, but – in the same breath – life can be so so good. This contrast is disconcerting. After years of fog, stress, and anger, life to me just seems brighter, more fragile, more precious, all the more beautiful for its transience. As if I looked at it too hard it all might fall apart.
I turn 30 this year. On one hand, COVID feels like it stole my 20s away from me. On the other hand, COVID forced me to create a life and create work I actually love rather than live on autopilot. Again, there’s that give and take, the good and the bad of it all.
My life is full and creative and I would not undo the last four years because they made me who I am today. I know who I am more than ever before, and I like who I am. I know what I want and I’m not afraid to pursue it.
What do you want?
How to get back into yoga after COVID
Just as COVID times shaped me into the person I am today, my longstanding yoga practice (teaching and doing) has shaped my very being. Maybe it has yours, or you hope it will, but you just can’t seem to get yourself onto your yoga mat.
During COVID, we established or deepened some healthy habits. However, for some of my yoga students, COVID was a deeply unhealthy time where, between work, doom scrolling on Twitter, taking care of their families, and anxiously trying to get back to sleep, they didn’t have or make time for themselves or their usual ‘healthy routines’.
Gone were the gyms. Gone were the routines. We were stressed and unmotivated and exhausted. Not a great cocktail to maintain physical activity And still, four years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re still struggling to make time for movement or to pick back up our pre-COVID exercise habit.
Every week I have a student who comes to class and admits, “I haven’t done yoga in forever” or “I’m just getting back into yoga after a long break”.
Every week!
This is extremely common. Many of my yoga students took a break from yoga during the pandemic. Either they stopped going to a studio to practice yoga or they stopped doing yoga entirely.
To get back into yoga after a long COVID break, here’s my advice, as a professional yoga teacher.
Make it fun.
Go to a class taught by your favorite teacher (moi?) or ask a friend to join you so you don’t have to go at it alone. Wear your favorite workout outfit. You know the one that’s the color you love, or the set that matches.
Leave your ego at the door.
Restarting a yoga practice is daunting, to say the least. Our egos definitely get in the way with commentary about how things were before or how they should be now. And our bodies and their ability level and flexibility have likely changed in the last four years.
How can you let go of expectation and judgement and let yourself feel and experience?
Expect to be sore and tired.
You may be less flexible and less strong than you were two years ago, and that is okay and pretty much expected.
Make it a habit.
Find one yoga class you like and go to it every week for three months. By this point you’ll have established a habit and built back some strength and flexibility so that the act of yoga itself doesn’t feel like such a chore.
Put it on the calendar.
Fully book a class, then add it to your calendar. If you’ve already paid for the class, you’re much less likely to cancel or change your mind.
Set your clothes out the night before.
Pick your outfit (the cute one I mentioned earlier in this post) and lay it out in your closet. Another way to shorten the distance between you and getting on your yoga mat.
My Yoga Retreat in Morocco
12 women who love yoga and travel, 8 days in 3 Moroccan cities. Does it get more perfect than that?
Leave a Reply