COVID - hitting the wall!

I finally succumbed to COVID on 1st July. Being honest, I thought that maybe practicing yoga regularly and doing pranayama (breathing techniques) would somehow save me from feeling really bad with this. Sadly, it still hit me pretty hard - although not enough to end up in hospital, thankfully.

Being a long-term yoga practitioner did however give me a toolbox of practices and techniques to help me through the infection and beyond. On the worst days, yoga nidra enabled me to rest, in between coughing fits of course. I tried to do Yin yoga most days, if I was able. I found a new love for a deer pose variation. Bolster hugging is brilliant if you're not well!

Having COVID deeply constrained and disrupted my breath. So much so that, when I did get back to practice, my teacher could tell I was having breathing challenges even through Zoom...

For the first time in ages, I was able to focus on a daily pranayama/ meditation practice. It was interesting noting the state of my breathing and how this improved as I recovered. These practices are now more fully ingrained in my post-COVID yoga than they were before, so there have been positive changes.

I found a great Qigong practice called The 8 Brocades, which has also become a new part of my practice. The video link I've included is only about 15 minutes long, but I found it immensely helpful.

I've had to be patient, something that doesn't come naturally to me. My war-cry has been "... but I could easily do that before!". Recovery from any illness/ infection involves care and moderation. COVID is no different.

There's a saying in yoga "it's not about touching your toes, it's what you learn on the way down". For me it not been about what I could do before, but what I can do now and what I can learn from that.

My yoga didn't disappear over the last few weeks, it just changed and maybe evolved. Sometimes, we get on our mats and almost go through the motions of a set of poses almost on auto-pilot. COVID has gifted me the opportunity of breaking everything I knew about my practice apart and then rebuilding it.

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