I have been giving my all in my asana practice the last couple of weeks.  I have never felt pain in some parts of my body before.  We are twisting, we are forward bending and we are staying in warrior pose. I have an unwavering determination that this pain will, one day, be gone.  But, will it?

I look at life like this.  I try to avoid pain at any level because, simply stated, it hurts.  I have given up on personal trainers because their workouts make me too sore.  I have given up on people because they cause me too much pain.  I have let dreams stay dreams because going through the pain to reach them was too much   

My personal trainer used to say, “No pain, no gain.”   I used to call his sessions The Mahesh Torture Chamber and I wasn’t the only one.  I hate running so I would cheat and get on the elliptical instead of running on the treadmill for 10 minutes.  I would always opt out of upper body days only to be tortured by a whole body workout. 

Giving up on people and detaching from people are two separate things.  I have purposefully given on many people because the pain I let them cause me.  Most of the time, I give the person one more chance by asking them why they would talk about me behind my back.  Then, somehow that makes me crazy.  I don’t even care anymore what people say because most of the times what people say about me is a description of themselves.   

I have easily given up on dreams many times because of the pain I would have to go through to get there.   Who doesn’t like instant gratification?  I am now realizing that pain must be present to truly appreciate the dream that is being achieved.  If you look at anyone that has done something great, you will find that all of them had to go through some kind of pain to achieve their dreams.

While this realization doesn’t make the pain less, it does make the pain a little more enjoyable. Feeling the pain is making me more motivated and results in more pain.  I am learning the ways not to avoid pain but to be with the pain.  I need to feel my quadriceps in order to appreciate the definition they are starting to get.  I need to feel the grind of working towards my dreams to attain them.  The pain is going to always be there.  If I can learn to be with the pain, the process become more enjoyable.