Yes, it's another spirtual experience at yoga . . .

So, I went to yoga again at 9am this morning, which was admittedly difficult after all of yesterday's excitement. Yesterday morning's session was wonderful, and even my bad leg didn't give me a hard time - in fact, because of yoga, I felt lovely for the rest of the day.

Not this morning. I could barely do any of the poses. I was so stiff. I tried really hard, but I couldn't. And it's really frustrating for me, as someone who is so flexible that I'm used to having yoga instructors approach me to help me into more challenging poses, to be trying to go into upward bow and hear Calvin telling Theresa, "Get Meggan down, get Meggan down." Apparently, although I look just like this when I'm in upward bow, the way I got into it was not so good.

Anyway, when it came time for shava-asana (meditation), I was lying there thinking my usual thoughts about getting present and trying not to perform and (of course) wishing I was as flexible as I used to be, and about all the sweating and de-toxing I was doing. My mind wandered back to that upward bow and how T&C wanted me to stay down in a regular backbend. My yoga instructors are just like my tri coaches, I thought. Always telling me I'm trying to go too far, too fast. Then I thought for a few minutes about nice it would feel to just be instead of pushing so hard to be great, and I realized that trying to be great all of the time is a toxin itself.

I'm not saying we all shouldn't try to be great, and I definitely won't stop trying to be great (and that extends to my personal, school, tri and work life). But there really is something to be said for knowing when the time to be great has come, and for reocognizing that what is great for you is not great for someone else, and vice versa (3:53:17 is not a great Olympic time for many.) There is also something to be said for being where you are at that moment. For getting out of whether you like something or dislike it. Osho said, "To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind." Do I like the pain that comes with training and wish I could avoid some parts of it (like running hill repeats)? Yes. Does it matter in the end whether I liked it or didn't? No. What matters is that I did it.

There will be plenty of time for me to be great, for me to be advanced. I'm not even 30. I have my whole life. What is more important is being completely aware of - and okay with - where I am right now. Because if I'm not living right now, where am I living? In the past, which is already done and therefore immovable; in the future, which has yet to be and is, to some degree, completely out of my hands, but is largely created by what I am doing right now. Refusing to be in the present, to be okay in the present, is denying myself the future.

Wish me luck on my first run since the race tomorrow morning. I know that whatever happens is meant to be.