Bad Good for My Ego

One of the things I like about doing Ashtanga yoga is that I’m reasonably good at it—not compared to anyone who’s really good, mind you, but compared to your average stiff-bodied fifty year-old, anyway. After more than a decade of bending my body into various shapes on a pretty regular basis, I can manage to do so with some degree of success—at least with the poses that I do pretty regularly.

So, I get to feel, when I reach around my body to grab my big toe while standing on one foot and then bend from the waist to bring my head towards my knee, for instance, that I’m doing something that most people can’t and I get to feel all special and good about myself, even imagining that anyone who might be watching me out the corner of their eye as they do their own practice is saying to themselves, “Right on. Check out that old dude; I hope I’m like that when I’m his age,” or even, “Boy, I wish I could do that myself.”

However, with my left knee all messed up as it currently is, my ability to fold myself into some of the more impressive—and even many of the more basic—asanas is seriously curtailed. I’ve even lost lotus and am essentially, in terms of flexibility on my lower left side, pretty much where I was when I began this journey twelve years ago.

Anyone watching me now would say, “Aw, that poor old guy; I sure hope I’m not as stiff as him when I’m his age,” and I concur; I wish I wasn’t either.

But I’m trying to take this as a lesson in humility; so, I’m not as cool on the yoga scale as I thought I was; as a matter of fact, I am a stiff middle-aged man who isn’t impressing anyone with his slow and gentle practice.

But I sure am cool to think that way, no?