Recovery takes practice

Today’s workout was brutal. Crossfit Hero DVB. Look it up if you’re unsure. Medicine-ball runs, wall balls shots and rope climbs. The sort of session where the physical challenge becomes a mental one: keep going when everything is telling you to stop.

And strangely, that bit is familiar territory for me. I know how to push. I know how to find another gear when my legs are burning and I know I’ve still got work to do. There’s something quite reassuring about having a job to do and getting on with it.

Stopping is different.

After a workout like this, recovery is crucial. But my instinct isn’t necessarily to stop. It’s to keep moving, keep busy, get on with the rest of the day. Today, I decided to do the opposite. I went into my yoga room, put a bolster underneath my knees and lay down on my Shakti mat in Savasana.

At first, I used my breath to help me settle. Inhale for 4, exhale for 8. Gradually, I could feel my body becoming heavier against the floor. The workout was still there. The pulse. The warmth. The energy running through my body. But I didn’t need to do anything with it. I just lay there.

And that was the interesting bit.

Because Savasana and I have a complicated relationship. There are days when lying still for one minute feels almost impossible. My body is restless. My mind is busy. I’m irritated, agitated and thinking about all the things I need to do.

But today, stillness was exactly what I needed. The effort started to drain away. My breathing slowed. My body softened. And eventually there was nothing to achieve, nowhere to go and nothing I needed to fix. Twenty blissful minutes of being supported by the floor.

It reminded me why I value yoga beyond the physical practice.

Yoga gives you a toolkit. Sometimes the tool you need is strength. Sometimes it’s movement. Sometimes it’s the ability to push through something difficult.

And sometimes the skill is recognising that you don’t need to push at all.

For me, that might actually be the harder lesson.

I spend a lot of time asking my body to do more.

Today, the most useful thing I could do for it was ask it to do nothing.