Happily ever after is for fairy tales.
Wifey and I have been married for 20 years, which have seen their ups and downs. One particularly bad period coincided with kid number two and in an interesting plot twist, while he was not a part of the cause, he was very much a part of the cure.
Somewhere around his first birthday we were to the point that the only conversation we could have, that didn’t descend into an argument, was over what was for dinner.
We still loved each other, but we were stuck in a conflict loop and couldn’t escape, because we were weighed down by the burdens of past hurts.
Around this time, wifey determined to shed the last of her baby weight, and went back to regular yoga practice, shortly after which I started a regular practice.
We did Bikram hot yoga; 90 minutes of stress and strain in 105 degree heat. A program where you concentrated on the next move, or even the next breath, rather than anything else.
We went to class (sometimes together and sometimes separately) three or four times a week, and after about four months we noticed something, the hard exercise allowed us to lay down the burdens of the past and for the first time in 18 months we could talk, without tearing at each other.
I have written extensively about how much I owe to hard, regular exercise; my marriage, my third son, even my very life.
All of which came down to having a time and place where I could lay down the burdens of the past and move forward without them.
It is great to relieve yourself of the psychological burdens of the past, but the question is how to do it. My way was through hard exercise.
What’s yours?
