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There are a few things that feel unshakably bad for me:  Voluntarily being outside in the snow.  Spending my work weeks in an office building (and, even worse, a suit).  Wearing my pajamas all day.  Watching television in the middle of a beautiful afternoon.  And eating chocolate.*

* I understand that I have just alienated 90% of my audience, including a few of you I hold particularly dear, but please bear with me and my eccentricities and read on for even more horrifying evidence of my chocolate antipathy.  Remembering, of course, that we vilify that which we love the most.

For the most part, my weeks of second-time new motherhood confirmed these truths by which I live.  Except, most surprisingly — and, probably, most enticingly for those of us (that is all of us) who want another excuse to eat it — for the chocolate.

Managing My Foibles

It’s not that I set out to hate cold weather (there were days when I relished a walk through an ice storm to my college classes bundled in my favorite big-shouldered tweed coat) or suits (that short little DKNY tangerine number I wore during my short stint at a law firm in the 90’s made me feel downright L.A. Law).  But over years of figuring out what makes me turn the crazy corner, I have discovered that certain things should be avoided, however unreasonable it may seem on the surface.

As I said, this second round of postpartum fighting insanity has confirmed the wisdom of four out of five of these rules.

For example, an April snowstorm, it turns out, isn’t nearly so bad when it merely gives you an excuse to hunker down in your cocoon of a command central — comfy corner of the couch, multiple pillows for multiple purposes, TiVo and DVD player remotes, cell phone, laptop, and baby all within easy reach.  Throw in your best friend visiting to help out and you know for a fact that no person in her right mind would ever set foot on her snow-covered front walk unless she had a really, really good reason to.

As for the office and suit thing, I plainly figured that one out a long time ago, as witnessed by the fact that over successive round-ups of clothes to send to the consignment shop in Washington, DC, where I continue to get the best return, all matching suits except the one equally suitable for job interviews and funerals have vacated my closet.  Self-regulated maternity leave, however — the kind where you get to consider when you actually want to go back to work — provides a healthy and somewhat smug reminder that, no matter how many times I timidly offer to relieve Mike of the burden of providing us with an employer-sponsored health plan by sending my resume out to some local law firms, I really, really, really don’t want him to take me up on it.

And the all-day pajama marathons?  Although actually recommended during the first two postpartum weeks — “Nest,” they tell you.  “Don’t leave the bed.  Let your partner take care of you.”  — the midwives plainly don’t know me and my anxiety. A mere forty hours or so sitting in bed with a mounting terror of all the laundry not being done nearly killed me.  Wearing my pajamas downstairs did nothing more than turn the couch into a big, stale version of my bed, making it completely impossible for me to nap anywhere and thus further fueling my shaky panic attacks.  Amazing how something as simple as donning some clean clothes can convince me I’m actually going to do something that day, even if I’m really not.

The television-in-the-middle of the day rule, I’ll admit, is not a hard and fast one.  If I’m, say, pregnant and tired and have done enough in one day to justify a little feet-up time, some judicious TiVo and Netflix can go a long way toward the fiction that watching t.v. needn’t be all that different from reading a book.  Ditto breastfeeding every couple of hours for weeks on end.  While I understand the concept of peacefully breastfeeding absent any outside distractions, reality begs for a little television to break up the endless repetition.  I’m not talking The Price Is Right or the final episodes of The Guiding Light (although I’ll admit my allegiance to that soap during my teens and twenties does nudge me in the direction of seeing it all end).  Just a little well-earned Emmy-nominated drama in my otherwise stunningly undramatic life of infant-care.

Which leaves me with the chocolate.

Chocolate, I’ll admit, isn’t inherently evil.  But it can sneak up on you.  Until — this is a true story — you eat a box of it every night backstage during rehearsals for a community theater production of Crimes of the Heart, in which the chocolates are a first act prop and you do not appear during the entire second act, leaving you with nothing to do but sit backstage feeling bad for yourself and eating the props.  I became so thoroughly addicted to the combination of sugar and caffeine that I began buying candy bars and other junk that I believed had been relegated to my college past of late night trips to the 7-11 with the change scrounged from the bottoms of my and Kali’s book bags.  Disgusted with myself, once the play closed I didn’t eat chocolate for three full years until I allowed myself the occasional dark chocolate Droste pastille during my first pregnancy.  This part is true as well.

And so, determined to let some good come from the postpartum anxiety weight loss (this is sick, I know, but sometimes I feel the need to be honest no matter how sick it makes me out to be) I fought a deep, disturbing craving for chocolate.  I sent Mike to Target for the cheap boxes of chocolate brownie flavored Z Bars.  Raced through tubs of ultimately unsatisfying vanilla ice cream.  Piled every kind of cheese I could find on top of slices of apple in an attempt at combining healthy eating with the sort of fat content that would make people without my congenitally low blood pressure keel over on the spot.

During those first four weeks when Mike was home and visitors were abundant, it wasn’t that hard to let the Z Bars satisfy my craving.  In fact, the whole infant care thing wasn’t bad at all.  For once in my life, I felt content to be physically still for most of the day.  And, hey, I took on only one little work assignment.  Okay, plus more than one YMM essay.  But, still, I spent an awful lot of time sitting quietly with the baby.

It was last week — my second without weekday company — that I began to feel not so great about this precious time in my life to just be with my baby.  I have no doubt there are people out there whose souls are satisfied by the joy of staring into their newborn’s eyes.  While my heart truly does fly when Lily grins that silly infant grin at me, however, my soul craves something more.  Something that not even a bit of middle-of-the-day television watching can satisfy.

So it was that I found myself leaving my Baby and Me yoga class on Wednesday feeling unaccountably sad.  Lonely, despite the company I’d just shared.  Frustrated by the plain fact that of course I have to spend part of the hour-and-a-half class feeding my six-week-old.  Out of sorts in a way that I recognized as induced by a lethal combination of hormones and a life at a standstill.

By the afternoon, I knew I had to get out of the house.  “Groceries!” I thought, in the over-excited way of parents shut in with small beings who can seduce their parents’ minds into mush if we fail to find formerly tedious errands to get us out of the house.  I grabbed grocery bags and a shopping list with my free hand as I bounced Lily — plainly agitated by my agitation — with the other.

Halfway out the door, I stopped.  “It’s really nice out,” I said, probably out loud because my very forgiving neighbors would surely forgive the new mother talking to herself.  “I should take a walk.”

Into the house I swirled, Lily complaining at the whiplash.  I dropped her on the couch and grabbed the Ergo.  She cried harder when she saw it.  “You’re just going to fall asleep if I put you in this, aren’t you?” I asked her, unnervingly guilt-ridden at the very idea of giving my infant another opportunity to sleep.  “We’ll go to Earthfare instead.”

I picked up the grocery bags again, but hesitated.  Lily would sleep through the grocery shopping as well, and I wouldn’t get any time outdoors, much less the exercise my anxiety-induced adrenaline demanded.  Maybe a walk was a better idea.

I dithered.  Lily glared at me from the couch.  Somehow, half an hour went by.

Finally, I found an uneasy compromise.  Dump the shopping list, strap on the Ergo, and walk to the walkable grocery store to buy … I wasn’t sure what.  Or maybe I was.  Because, don’t you know, chocolate bars are easy to carry home when you have a ten-and-a-half-pound (no, that’s not a typo) baby strapped to your chest.  And a few chocolate-covered cherries from the bulk section won’t hurt, especially since they’re, you know, practically healthy, what with those cherries in them and all.

And so I found myself at home unloading no less than three chocolate bars, a big bag of chocolate-covered cherries, and an even bigger one of chocolate-covered almonds.  Along with three baking potatoes just to lend the trip a smidgen of respectability.  The curse of the backstage chocolate addiction seemed to have returned full force.

Here’s the thing, though.  After plowing through a good portion of the chocolate-covered cherries, I felt better.  The next morning I even felt positively good.  Great, I’d say.  And, yes, fairly certain that my body had been trying to tell me something — that the chocolate was good for me.

Aside from wanting this to be the case very, very much, how could it be?

Navigating the Waters of the “Good” and the “Bad”

Nothing, in yoga, is empirically “good” or “bad.”  A pose isn’t “bad” for your back.  It may be beyond your body’s limitations, but there are ways to work toward the intention of the pose, to achieve the opening that is right for your body.

So, too, the niyamas — the things from which we refrain — aren’t necessarily “bad” as a basic matter.  But, done without thought, without context, they may harm us.

Which, really, is what “bad” translates to in yogic thinking:  harm.  Nothing and no one is inherently bad.  The harm they might cause is what we seek to avoid.

So, at a time in my life when I felt unsettled and uncertain, when boxes of chocolate were not only nightly available to me but tempting in a mindless “I’m unsettled and uncertain” way, yes, chocolate was harmful.  Or, rather, my attitude toward it, my need to eat all of it was.  It rendered me unable to practice moderation, much less to sit still.  Banishing it from my life, on the other hand, introduced some much needed discipline and allowed me to see more clearly.

That was seven years and millions of different circumstances ago.  Last week, more still than I wanted to be, hormones still racing to provide for a new baby, a two-year-old cheerfully demanding a new surge of energy every evening, chocolate was apparently just the thing I needed.  Depriving myself, it turns out, was what became harmful.

The difficult part of this lesson is that it became easy only in hindsight.  I had to struggle through some loneliness and craziness to light on the idea of buying myself some chocolate.  Had I thought it through in advance, I wouldn’t have known that it would turn out to be just what I needed.  In fact, I’m pretty sure I would have talked myself out of it, being so firmly entrenched in the “chocolate is bad for me” mindset.

Here’s where trust plays a role.  And letting go of the concept of control.  And letting yourself be carried by the energy of the Universe.  Sometimes, no matter how hard we have worked for our wisdom, we have to admit that we aren’t so wise.  Sometimes, we have to ingest a little something that’s bad for us to find out that it’s actually pretty much what we needed all along.

How does this translate to things that are a little — oh, I don’t know — more important than chocolate?  Career choices, say, or child rearing philosophies?  Decisions about where to live or how to invest our economy-battered retirement funds?

The translation, actually, is pretty direct.  Whether it’s chocolate or your livelihood, cultivate your wisdom.  Live it and trust it and avoid that which you believe will harm you.  And then, one day, pay attention to that part of yourself knocking at the firmly shut door of your beliefs.  Listen to what might just be your heart asking you to reevaluate, to take a chance, to trust.

Maybe, just maybe, you’ll have the pleasure of finding out that a little chocolate can be pretty darned good for you.

Now, if someone could please explain why it appears that the broccoli I really want to eat these days seems to be bad for Lily.

Testing Your Instinct — Handstand Variations

For all but a rare few of us, the instinct not to suspend our heads a foot above the floor with nothing between them and a concussion but our spindly little arms is a pretty strong one.

For those who find this instinct compelling enough to thwart any attempt at a basic handstand (adho mukha vrksasana), I invite you to approach the pose with a new, “maybe it’s good for me” attitude.  The first time I managed to find handstand was when I realized my thoughts about quitting my job as a law school professor and moving to Los Angeles to be a writer would never be more than thoughts unless I just took a leap.  I applied the same illogical leap to adho mukha vrksasana, and I never looked back.

For those who have found the fun and even pleasure in the pose, I offer some playful variations:  a backbending version in which you challenge yourself to open your heart while still supporting the pose and a one-handed variation that I quite freely admit I can’t do but have seen others manage, including one very talented woman.

Whatever your choice, what I’m really offering is the opportunity to jump into something you might not do if you thought about it too much.

Because if there’s one thing a new mother knows about, it’s not overtaxing her brain.

Adho Mukha Vrksasana Instructions

Adho Mukha Vrksasana Variations Instructions