Average Jane Keeps Going

I’ve noticed something interesting lately about the way I react to things I hate to do.

It first caught my attention in my vocal lessons. There’s an exercise that involves pressing on your face under your cheekbones with your fingers and "bubbling" scales by blowing air through your slack lips. It looks stupid, it gets really difficult on the high notes, and it makes your lips and face tired. I hated doing it.

My vocal coach was very insistent that it’s a valuable exercise and I should keep at it until I improved. As much as I despised practicing it, I kept at it. She was right – it does help in significant ways. I don’t even mind doing it anymore, although it would be a stretch to say that I like it.

Yesterday in yoga class, I ran across something else I hate to do: backbends. It isn’t that I’m not strong or flexible enough to do them, it’s…something else. I really couldn’t put my finger on what it was until the teacher started talking about something I’d heard in various yoga classes and seminars over the years. She mentioned that backbends "open the heart" in ways that are more than just metaphorical. Sometimes, she said, people cry after they’ve done them.

As someone who does an unhealthy amount of emotional suppression, I’ve always pooh-poohed the idea that a yoga pose could make me cry. After all, I’d heard the same thing about deep-tissue massage and I’ve never had any kind of emotional reaction to it (beyond "ow!" in certain circumstances).

We went through a series of backbend poses and made our way to camel pose. My backbend-aversion kept me from being able to bend backward to reach my heels, but the teacher had us positioned with our thighs against the wall and blocks by our ankles. The minute I managed to bend back and reach the blocks with my hands while keeping my legs on the wall, I felt as though I were going to burst into tears. It didn’t hurt, it wasn’t all that physically challenging – it was just the successful backbend itself that caused the reaction. Huh.

Now I feel driven to practice backbends until my fear and avoidance of them goes away.

I don’t know exactly why I’ve started to embrace things I once went out of my way to avoid. Maybe it has to do with getting older and wiser and realizing that most things aren’t as bad as I think they’re going to be once I give them enough of a chance.

Can you think of anything you hate to do that you’ve come to accept or even like once you pushed yourself into continuing?