Mirror Image

I’ve been doing a lot of pre-natal yoga while I’ve been pregnant. It has been incredibly helpful in loosening up the very tight muscles that come with pregnancy. It has also helped temporarily relieve my back pain from last year that made a happy reappearance through these pregnancy months. 

The best part of yoga is that it’s relaxing. I have always found it to be calming but never more so than now. Just holding positions and letting muscles stretch is soooooo nice. 

Up until a couple of weeks ago, I was feeling very energized during each class. Then I noticed something that wasn’t so apparent before. My belly!  It wasn’t as if it didn’t exist prior to my discovery; it just didn’t look so big. It kept haunting me during this particular class. I felt like this crazy rubbery creature that had three enormous bubbles on its body – my head, my belly and my butt. 

I  seriously wondered why this was bugging me so much and I realized that it had to do with the how the substitute teacher set up the class. Our regular instructor never made us face the mirrors. She must have somehow known that would be bothersome to very emotional women. She conducted class  so that we always faced the bare walls. However in this class, we were constantly looking at the mirrors. 

I’m not one who walks around in general peering at myself in any reflection. I don’t believe in doing that for a number of reasons:

1)      My hair usually looks a mess and I don’t like to be reminded of it. Ignorance is bliss for a reason.

2)      I usually look tired and don’t like to be reminded of it. Again bliss in ignorance.

3)      I think it’s vain to always look at oneself in a reflection. I like to accept myself for who I am and what I look like at the moment – an occasional glance is fine but I see many people fawning over themselves for minutes in a reflection. I think that behavior is unhealthy.

It was definitely disconcerting because I usually don’t feel bad about the way I look. Most people would probably say that I look like I never care. Generally speaking, I am very low maintenance.   It was the first time in recent memory where it really dug a hole in my brain. After it dawned on me that I wasn’t an enormous globe, I felt better.  I decided to continue to keep the mirror reflections to a minimum so that I wouldn’t judge myself or have a baby body moment. Now if I walk passed a mirror or reflection, I don’t feel as bad because I know this is just temporary.