Finding myself as a mother

A few weeks ago I was able to get myself to a yoga class. A yoga class, all by myself. Not one at home with my 11 month crawling around me and on me, not a 5 minute practice on her playmat during nap time or after she went to sleep, but an honest to goodness yoga practice at a yoga studio. Don't get me wrong, I've happily been embracing these smaller yoga practices that I squeeze in throughout my days as mamahood has changed immeasurable things in my life, my yoga practice being only a small thing in that long list, but I will say it felt freeing to go practice on my own.

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As we began class, she started as many teachers often do, by having us set an intention. This was nothing new to me, but in that moment it felt very new and very potent. I had this time set aside just for me and I had the opportunity to a mold an intention around that. As I sat contemplating for a moment what came to me was "to find myself". And that blew me away. 

I had not realized I had lost myself. 

And wow, what better metaphor for motherhood is that?

And so rather than hooking into what that was about and where it came from I started my practice. I moved, I breathed, I got to be in my body whole independent at least for this short period of time. As I moved through my practice, I simply held that intention to find myself through my practice.

As I lay in savasana after class I let that intention of finding myself wash over me again. And I realized in that moment that the person that I knew as "me" was no longer. The minute I became a mother I became a different person, motherhood had changed me in ways I hadn't even realized until I tried to get back to the me that was me before I was who I am now. I was thinking I had lost something because I had lost that aspect of myself, that me that was me. But here's the thing, in our yoga practice, one of our goals is to begin to separate our ego (our sense of me) from our essence (our light, our spiritual essence) and to recognize we are not actually the "me" we think we are. 

Becoming a mama suddenly became this profound yogic practice of letting the "old me" die away to welcome this newest incarnation of me. And I have no doubt that this newest incarnation won't be around too long as newer parts of me start to unfold as my daughter grows and I grow with her.

We are together on this journey of constantly discovering ourselves. Its messy, its unexpected, its certainly not as picturesque as my life before, but you know what? I love it.