After three days of using my CPAP machine and being able to breathe and sleep at the same time, I decided it was time to start bringing back the things I missed doing. Understanding my body, I did this in slow careful steps to allow for proper healing.
Okay, okay you caught me. After three days I woke up an hour earlier than normal, did 30 minutes of yoga, went for a 40 min walk, worked a full day, then came home and forced myself to get writing and other work done at home. The next day I was exhausted, felt like a lazy, fat, old, failure and worried that I would never fully regain my health.
Then a moment of rational thought popped into my brain, and I realized that having had sleep apnea for more than a year my body was not in good shape. My muscles had been deprived of oxygen and exercise. I had put on a significant amount of weight and had been mostly sedentary.
I need to slow down.
I need to be gentle with myself.
I switched from yoga I could do three years ago to beginner’s yoga.
I am careful to get to bed early and wake up 15 minutes earlier than normal.
I make sure there are healthy things for me to eat that are quick to cook.
I give myself down time after work and do only a few easy tasks.
This feels so much better but weirdly foreign, like I don’t have the right to be gentle. Like if I am going to get healthy I should do so in this crazy, abusive, balls-to-the wall way. Which is ridiculous, but a lot of my self-talk is.
Any advice for my healing journey? Anything that helped you as you came back from illness to your best self?
The gentler yoga is a great idea. I haven’t done that, but I did start a beginner’s belly dance class, which has been amazing. Technically it’s not super demanding, there’s downtime during instruction, and isn’t hard on the knees (super important to me.) I don’t know how other dance classes would be, but what makes it doable really is that we get to pause during the class. I could pause on my own, but that’d feel awkward. This doesn’t. (And OMG, it’s all core muscles… Ouch!)
I love belly dance and I haven’t done it in years. Thanks for reminding me about it.
I am famous for trying to change too much too fast and that is a sure path to disaster (and self-loathing). I recommend making one change at a time and sticking with it for three weeks before trying to add something else. I read once that you have to do something every day for 21 days straight to create a new habit, so there you go – it’s science!
I am glad I’m not the only one! Yes making slow changes is always best- I will work on it!
thank you Racheal since I”ve moved to a new area, I”ve been slowly growing the places I teach yoga at I love teaching group classes and have been doing some p/t yoga related work too, which has all been great. now I want to focus on the reiki side of my business. I”ve had a hard time finding regular reiki clients even though the feedback I get I always positive, and I offer discounted 5 and 10 session packages, and offer a blend of restorative yoga and reiki sessions as one way to differentiate my reiki work from the many other reiki and energy workers in my area. I know one thing i”m struggling with is identifying my ideal reiki client and she/he matches up with the income I need to generate from reiki. the other struggle has been offering reiki in already saturated market. i”d also love to be at home more, and would love to offer sessions by Skype to some of students from my old town, but i”m not sure how best to offer reiki and restorative yoga successfully via Skype. ive been struggling with how to maintain my old yoga community, now 3 hours away, beyond blog posts and the 1 to 2 times a year yoga workshops I offer to them. any thoughts on any or all of the above would be most welcomed. thank you so much Racheal for continuing to generate and offer thoughtful and practical tools to help define and grow our businesses! order a custom essay