Salt

I spend 90 minutes a week, sometimes 180 if I’m really being good to myself, gazing intently at my reflection in a full length mirror, sweating profusely through 26 yoga poses.  My hair pulled from my face in a sloppy ponytail sticking up on top of my head, I don’t bother with make-up.  The first time I taste it on my lips after practice I’m startled; washing away the residue on my face I wonder how it’s possible my skin could feel so soft.

 

Most newbies practice in the back row.  I started there, too.  The instructor promises we will get used to looking at ourselves in the mirror, and she is right. I choose to be front and center all the time now, finding it easier to concentrate on what I’m doing when I’m closer to myself. I’ve become comfortable with who I am in the hot room.  It is its own kind of beauty.

Yet interestingly enough, outside it’s a different story. I’m desperate to run again, to rekindle my love affair with this most efficient and effulgent elixir that tamed and toned me when my world came crashing down. Yet my knee buckles and my hips stiffen in protest each time I try.  I know I’m pushing my luck, and need to surrender quietly before I’m forced to kneel.  But doing so means making a home for the uninvited pounds I’ve tried to tell myself won’t be staying for long.  I’ve become that woman with a closet full of clothes she can’t part with because someday they’ll fit again. As the muscle tone erodes from my limbs I wish for winter with her long pants and cozy sweaters.  I look better with lots of clothes on.  Except in the hot room.

I don’t understand my dynamic these days.  How can I be happy with my appearance as I sweat through yoga but nowhere else?  All I can attribute it to is my state of mind.  At yoga I believe I am enough.  I believe I am strong, tenacious, determined. I know I don’t have to be perfect, striving is where it’s at.  I know I will not wilt; I will not panic; I will not quit no matter how hot it gets. I can hold my poses, I can stretch just a bit further. And throughout it all I can maintain a peaceful confidence.

She calls it mirror work. And work it is. It’s the practice of studying your reflection in the glass and liking what you see. 

Her name is Nayyirah Waheed. She writes about the beauty in ourselves we absolutely must see:

you.

are

your

own

standard of

beauty.

          --mirror work