The first stage is denial. All I have to do is ignore my sore throat and drink a lot of water and it will just go away, right? Hah. Next comes the mental tug of war about whether I need to call in sick to work or not, especially if I begin to notice my symptoms on a Monday morning. I have to be sure I'm not faking myself out, because if I do call in sick to work and it turns out I'm not sick at all, I spend the latter hours of the afternoon pacing around my apartment with restless guilt. I seem wired against fully relaxing and enjoying a day of playing hookey.

Of course, if illness truly has knocked me on my ass, all traces of my being an independent woman who is fully capable of taking care of herself completely vanish. I'm suddenly sending out a "Help! Heidi is sick!" vibe like the Bat Signal and really wishing my boyfriend would rush to my side with Odwalla Wellness and cold medicine and Spaghettios. He and I actually come from two very different schools of being sick, however, so it's a little hard for him to realize I crave attention and concerned looks when I've got the Martian Death Flu. It's similarly hard for me realize he wants to be left the hell alone once I've inevitably transmitted the illness to him. No Spaghettios for him.

It is a pretty rare thing that I'm completely laid out by an illness, and when it does happen I blame myself for letting my body get run down, for destroying my own immune system by staying out too late or dancing too hard or whatever. I often push on and try to keep functioning when I should be resting. In London last fall there was no way I was going to let a simple cold keep me from running all over the city through the rain and cold like I always do, until I lost my voice and felt so crappy one night I stayed in my hotel room and watched back-to-back documentaries on Queen for four hours. Not exactly a good use of London's resources.

Just recently I decided to get serious about my yoga practice again, if you can call going two or three times a week a serious commitment. I think I went into it with the hope in the back of my mind that it would help me shape up my body a bit, and that hope is definitely still there. However, my first class back was like an epiphany. Ah yes, this is what it feels like to be fully present in my body, taking each breath as a new chance to do something good for it, learning not to judge. This is what it feels like to start to reconnect your mind with your body. This is what it feels like to listen to what your body is trying to tell you. Even writing about it right now makes me all fidgety to be back in class, because I haven't quite managed to hang on to these feelings outside of yoga class quite yet. I'm working on it.

my yoga studio