I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions, owing largely to my belief that we’re all more alike than different, and the average list of resolutions is likely interchangable between most of us, Trump voters and backyard gardeners, nuns and bus drivers alike imploring themselves to get more exercise, cook at home more, try and get more sleep. The urge to begin again, though: that resonates with me. I love a fresh start, a new calendar page, and am even, annoyingly, a morning person. I’ll rise with the sun to sit with my intentions and gratitude journals, sure I will. You don’t have to ask me twice to meditate or eat whole grains for breakfast or skip breakfast altogether because fasting’s the thing now — or no, wait, it’s protein you want to eat for breakfast, but only after drinking a liter of water and waiting an hour. I’ve done all these things over the years, and some of them were beneficial, others abandoned after a few days, but one that really stuck was the practice of yoga.
I was the stereotypical New Year’s Yoga Beginner — this will be the year!, we tell ourselves, struggling into fitness gear in our rush to meet the skilled-yogi friend who has invited us — walking with other hung-over seeming folks into the yoga studio, where the seasoned practitioners give us the tolerant, tight-lipped smiles of regular churchgoers who have to make room for the looky-loos who only show up on Christmas. Ah yes, their faces seemed to say, as they moved their mats ever closer…
