Every once in a while I get sick of trying to make myself feel better with yoga.  Yesterday was such a day. After a small argument with my husband I prepared to enter the haven of my practice and I couldn't.  Every time I approached my mat a well of anger rose up in me.  I could have simply trudged through the thick wall of irritation that paralyzed my movements, as some approaches to yoga advise.  Instead I fell onto my bed, face stuffed cock-eyed into a pillow and stared blankly into the mess of my ensuite bathroom.  Blink.  "What the hell's going on?"  Blink.  "I only have an hour until Rowan wakes up from her nap, I've got to get on this practice if I'm going to" Blink.  Cue tear.  Blink.  Blink.  And there it was - sadness.  The aching in my eyes and the center of my chest made it unmistakable.  I didn't move, which is uncharacteristic of me, instead I just lay there, feeling. 

The anger that was hot inside me just moments ago seemed completely dissolved.   I let the weight of my body sink into the memory foam beneath me and laid there like a child who's favorite toy had just been run over by a car - feeling helpless against the forces of the world beyond my control.  Often when I sit with sadness everything that has made me sad since the last time I allowed myself to feel it rises up - disagreements with my husband, the oil spill in the Gulf, the lonely face of an old man in the coffee shop I frequent.  I was intentional with my breath and let it gently push into the aching areas in my body.   Then, something other than my will flopped me onto a bolster and I laid there with my spine supported and chest wide open.  I committed myself to staying there for as long as my sadness needed.  It must have been at least 15 minutes before I felt the urge to wiggle a little bit - knees up, little sway from side to side.  And then a full practice ensued.  

By the end of my practice I realized the great service my resistance and anger did for me an hour prior.  I approached my practice initially as a way to evade the discomfort of my argument with my husband.  I wanted to feel better and I wanted to use yoga to do that for me.  But sadness needed to be felt, not placated, not bandaided but truly understood and processed.  There are many things that we can use to placate our uncomfortable feelings - chocolate, beer, shopping, American Idol - the list is virtually endless.  Has yoga been added to your list as a way to evade reality?  Maybe what you experience resistance to your practice is simply something inside you that is sick and tired of being "fixed" by yoga.  Maybe, instead, all that lives within you simply wants to be held by it.  Perhaps the resistance isn't ego but  Spirit begging you to cease the obsession with fixing, changing or bettering yourself.  In a world full of ways to placate our sorrows, surely a system with 3000 years of experience in healing can offer more to us than a simple bandaid.