September 15^th 2016.  I am in my room, practicing yoga alone, with the bedroom door closed, a sign taped upon it with polite instructions that I am not to be disturbed for 30 minutes.  As always, near the end of my practice, I sit on my mat, stretch out my right leg in front of me, and bend my left leg at the knee at about a 90 degree angle.  The familiar “hurdler stretch” I had been doing on and off since I was 13 years old and first started running track.  However, this time I am not preparing for a race.  I am preparing to lift my arms high into the air, breathing in deeply, feeling my rib cage lift and stretch.  This is the element that turns the movement into a yoga pose, rather than a mere track and field “stretch-prep.”

With my arms still stretched up high, I slowly bend forward at the waist, exhaling softly as my right leg stays straight, and my head travels toward my knee. I was giving myself another year to reach the point where my head would find the mat and rest there easily.  I had given myself so much time because it had already taken nearly three years to get to the point where I could semi-comfortably rest my head upon my right knee.  “Be patient,” was my mantra.  “You have a year to get past those few inches of space between knee and mat.”  There really was no rush.  No track meet coming up, no competition date looming upon which I needed to perform at a certain level.  Even taking longer than a year would be perfectly fine.  At 52 years old, here, alone in my room, I had all the time in the world.  There was no reason to go hard, to force myself to painfully push my body to its limits, as I had done in my younger years, hoping that the training and hard work would pay off on “competition day” and I would place ahead of whomever I happened to be racing against.

None of that exists in my room, in my head or in the muscles and tendons in my legs.  There is only time and a calm space to relax, stretch and see what might happen right here, right now as my head slowly travels past my knee cap.  This is not new territory.  I had been here before.  And for many days– after ten slow inhale/exhale combinations–that had been as far as I had gone.  Today, my head continues to travel downward a little more.  Now I can feel the hair of my recently cut afro brushing lightly against the mat.  Again, this is nothing new.  Mr. Stanley, my barber for the last 3 years, had taken my big bushy 1970s style afro down to about an inch– a stylish salt and pepper ‘do.’  I liked this sporty little ‘fro, and in the past couple of weeks, I had felt it going from just barely grazing the mat to feeling definitive contact.  My hair had found the floor, and I knew that my head would follow—just not any time soon.

As is true with everyone, my body has a weak side. My right side.  On my left side, I had long since touched the floor with my head easily cruising past my left knee and settling firmly on the mat where it rested after just the third inhale/exhale combination.  That was two years ago.  My right leg had never been so flexible, not even in my youth.  It also had sustained an injury on a crazy roller-coaster ride in June 2010, so I knew it would take much longer for that leg to eventually somewhat match the flexibility in the left.  I was prepared for millimeter-like progress with many stops and stalls in between.  “September or maybe November of 2017,” I thought. By that time, my muscles and tendons would loosen and stretch to the point where my head would finally find its resting spot on the right side of the mat.

I am at my 7^th inhale-exhale combination and I feel the possibility of going forward a little further as a little humming/buzzing feeling strums through my hamstrings and tendons.  It is not unpleasant, just some tiny communicative buzz telling me that something is happening and that it’s OK to lean down a little further.  I do, and I feel my hair not just grazing, but pushing down firmly on the mat.  The little humming/buzzing feeling in muscles and tendons continue, telling me again that something is happening and it’s OK to keep going.  Briefly I think, “I’m probably not supposed to be here yet.”  But I decide to stop listening to my thoughts, and instead listen to my body.  I inhale-exhale again, keeping my eyes lightly closed as I slowly continue moving into new territory until my head, first lightly, then fully, then firmly touches the soft texture of the mat.  I inhale-exhale two more times as I stay briefly in this brand new place, having accomplished a thing at 52 which I had been unable to do at 20, 30 or 40.

And now, four days later, I am writing this and thinking: How absolutely satisfying to know, that even in the realm of the physical, peak performance past a certain age is  attainable.  Even now, it’s still possible to break new ground.