back to the mat.

pain. foreignness. yoga. home.

it is evening, and i find myself on my mat.

i’m still using the same mat (B mat i love you) and the same incense (satya brand, dragon’s blood) from when i was a full-time yogi(ni — what is gender). but so much has changed.

tonight, my carefully curated playlists are silent, and instead i listen to an audiobook. fiction, which is also unusual, because as of late my mind isn’t really up to the challenge of critical theory, politics, or philosophy. in the dim “mood” lighting, i touch the outer edges of the soles of my feet together, legs in a diamond shape, and i fold forward. baddha konasana. bound angle pose. this is a shape where i usually feel nothing. less than nothing. a childhood filled with ballet lessons and natural hypermobility have always allowed this pose to feel restful.

not tonight.

tonight as i flop forward the way i’ve always done, i feel things. strange things. bad things. in my back mostly. and then i feel something even more strange.

i feel myself back out of the pose. i don’t stay. i don’t “breathe and invite my body to open” as i normally would.

i sit up.

and gently, with more intention and attention than i’ve ever paid old baddha konasana, i carefully (and now partially) fold forward again. this time without the pain.

and fucking hell i just start crying.

not sobbing or ugly crying. it’s not that dramatic. but i tear up.

and as i sit with myself to uncover why i feel so emotional, i realize.

because i find it absolutely fucking infuriating and impossible to be kind to myself in this way in this moment. it feels weird. foreign, even.

i don’t care about being flexible. not really. i don’t care about the external rotation of my hips or whether or not my practice is impressive. impressive to whom? the picture of my dead mother looking down from my altar? please.

no, it’s something else. it’s that, in this moment, what my body asks for, and what i finally deliver, is kindness. and not just any kindness. because i’ve rarely been the type to “go too hard” or “push myself too far.” in general, i’m pretty patient with myself. but the specific texture of kindness i need in this moment, this … delicate awareness. it’s so specific. it’s so unusual (for me to direct at myself). and wow. i hate it so much.

years of living with (increasingly intense and unrelenting) chronic pain and fatigue have changed me in ways that aren’t always obvious. even to me. i imagine the process of making salsa in my molcajete. smashing and grinding the ingredients mercilessly, releasing hidden flavor elements. capturing some secret essence in the sauce.

that’s how i feel. ruthlessly pulverized. ground to oblivion.

but also like there is a richness within me. a kind of complexity. a softening of sharp edges. that i didn’t have before.

i’m not trying to romanticize what is happening to me. it’s shit. it’s agonizing and cruel, and i spend so many days feeling alien to myself. and frankly trauma and illness don’t always or even often directly translate to grace and wisdom. more commonly, they lead to resentment and fear and rage (of which i also have my fair share).

but in my specific case, i did my best to mourn the body, the mind, the life i had but have no longer. i tried to welcome the new me, however different. i tried to be brave and be strong and above all, to be sane. the constant pain obscured by my maybe imperceptible masking that is so convincing, even my husband occasionally forgets the truth, the stark duality makes me feel split in half, never sure which one i am. am i the screaming gnawing pain that stretches through every minute i’m awake? or am i the person with smooth and hydrated skin, bouncy curls, and a face ten years younger than my age who stares back at me in the mirror?

i could say both. or neither. or a secret third thing. and i would still have no idea whether or not i’m right.

but eventually the contrast between the two became too much. the cleaved halves between my past and my present were pulled too far apart to maintain their coherence. and the choice i had to make finally crystalized itself in front of me. in that moment. on my mat. i realized what my bodymind had been trying to tell me for years. i had two options and two options only.

• you can be exceedingly, unfailingly kind to yourself.

• or you will pay such an astonishingly high price — physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, and relationally — that it’s really better if you just go ahead and choose option one.

so i did.

i came out of the pose. and tried to show up on my mat, not to recover the body i’d lost, but to connect with the body i have.

it is a difficult relationship to forge because my new body is faulty. unreliable and unintelligible. for someone who has for so long had such a special relationship with my body, who has earned that intimacy, anymore i feel like my body speaks a language i can’t even begin to understand.

the only thing i can compare it to is arriving to a new country you know nothing about. and just like the day i arrived to this country, not speaking a word of spanish, pointing to things on the menu and eating them appreciatively, foreign and uneducated in this new landscape of my body, all i can do is be kind. i hope that with this kindness, i will earn my body’s trust, begin to learn the customs, the language, how things are done.

but also like moving to a new country, every task, even the most mundane, becomes a mysterious adventure. will i unpack the groceries? or will i collapse onto the couch? will i fall asleep tonight? or will i lie awake for another six or seven hours? can i eat this food? or will it make me sick? every day, even though i do the simplest of tasks and go as slowly as i can, i am overwhelmed and exhausted.

i can only hope that someday my kindness will be rewarded. that i will feel like i belong here. in my body. that, while my condition may be rare to the rest of the world, it becomes familiar and legible to me. that i will be able to taste the subtle flavors, appreciate the textures, become aware of the specificity and nuance of the sensations. that i will once again turn this body into a home.

the mat is, in so many ways, the first place i ever really met myself. i have to trust that if i show up in earnest, it will bring me home one more time.

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rae dohar is a writer, coach, and teacher. she is also disabled. even though it doesn’t look like it. you can find information on their coaching here or read shorter form content here.