Last week, when I wrote my list of ‘10 activities for the 10th Month‘ I made sure to create a mix of ‘easy’ activities and slightly more challenging ones.
And my definition of easy and challenging is not just limited to the physical effort involved.
Physical effort is one factor, of course, but on any given day my ADHD brain might toss up some extreme resistance to anything that requires turning on the computer or changing clothes or asking someone to shift a plan.
And the really annoying thing is that I might not be consciously aware of the details of my resistance. My brain will just kind of slide over the idea because it is ‘too hard’ and unless I make a point of focusing on why I can’t seem to do that specific task, I’ll just kind of have the impression that there’s a logical reason why I’m not doing it.
Yes, in case you were wondering, that is all just as fun as it sounds.
So, I was prepared to face some resistance to starting my tasks, no matter how easy I had initially thought they would be but I hadn’t prepare to face continued resistance once I got going.
After an unexpectedly busy week last week I finally got around to choosing something from my list on Sunday.
Because I had plenty of time, I decided to do two things – journaling while sitting on the floor and a yoga video that was at least 30 minutes long.
The journaling was pretty easy and I enjoyed sitting on the floor to write for a change.
I had already rolled out my yoga mat to sit on and I had already picked out a video to do so I thought I had removed any obstacles to my practice.
By the way, this is the video I chose:
I was totally wrong about the obstacles.
It turns out that my brain did NOT want to do a 30 minute yoga practice that day.
In fact, it didn’t want to do any kind of yoga practice at all and it threw every thought it had at me.
‘You have other things you should be doing.’ – I did not. This was the time I had picked for this specific task.
‘You aren’t really up for a long practice today. You can stop here and do a long practice tomorrow.’ – There was no physical reason why I couldn’t do my chosen practice on Sunday. And there was no reason to believe that I would be suddenly more able to do it on Monday instead.
‘This is too hard for you right now. Maybe just do some alternate poses.’ – Sure, some of it was a little out of my range right now but there wasn’t anything especially difficult for me in the practice.
‘Maybe you should stop this and do some drawing or reading instead. It’s way harder to find time to do that stuff – you can do yoga any day.’ – This is a straight-up lie. It’s harder to find a time when my brain will let me do 30 minutes of yoga than to find a time when I can read or draw.
I think I know what was going on there.
My brain knows that my capacity has varied WILDLY over the past few years and it wanted to protect me in case I actually couldn’t – mentally or physically – do the practice.
If I CHOSE to do something else, to switch or shorten my practice, to be creative, then it would feel like self-care.
If I COULDN’T do the practice then it might end up feeling like a harsh reminder of the challenges I have been facing. It might even feel like failure.
No wonder my brain was trying everything to get me to change course.
But I chose to keep going.
I didn’t do it by white-knuckling it and forcing a sort of gritty, ‘no-excuses!’ style of self-discipline.
Instead, I just gently kept going – giving myself permission to stop if it felt like too much.
I didn’t force anything – I tried to do that yoga thing of ‘meeting yourself where you are’ – and to just find some ease in one movement and then in the next.
I don’t think I found a lot of flow and I definitely didn’t get into any zone.
I had to choose to keep going over and over again and that kept me in a self-conscious, hyper-aware kind of space that was really not ideal.
But I knew that even if I wasn’t having a ‘perfect’ yoga experience, I was having an honest one, and my body was going to benefit from it all the same.
I was right – my body felt much better when I was done than it had felt when I started.
And, you know what?
My brain felt better too.
