Returning to Yoga With a Swollen Wrist and Delusional Optimism
There’s something deeply humbling about realizing you’ve become the most sedentary person in your own household.
For the longest time, I had every excuse lined up neatly like trophies. My swollen wrist. Ralph’s ankle injury. Work. Stress. Fatigue. The weather. Mercury probably being in retrograde somewhere. But lately, as Ralph slowly started returning to yoga despite his very obvious limp, I began feeling like I was the only one left permanently fused to a chair.
So when Ralph ended up missing his Friday 6pm yoga class, I immediately convinced him to attend the Saturday 8am session instead. Surprisingly, he agreed rather quickly and even commented, “At least the people in the 8am class actually take the time to talk to me.”
I laughed.
Because after all these years in the Philippines, Ralph still hasn’t fully accepted one important cultural reality: Filipinos usually don’t randomly strike up conversations with people they haven’t properly been introduced to. And honestly? Even more so if you’re a foreigner. We’ll smile warmly at you from a distance though. Very warmly. While pretending not to notice you.
But more than that, the 8am group is different. That’s our original group. Our people. The familiar faces from when yoga was less about flexibility and more about surviving whatever impossible pose Master G decided to unleash on us that morning.
Oddly enough, convincing Ralph to go somehow triggered something in me too.
I suddenly felt this urge to return.
My wrist is still swollen. Very swollen. The kind of swollen that makes you negotiate with yourself before opening jars. But honestly? The thought of seeing my friends again motivated me more than anything else. Plus, the last time I visited Daily Prana, Master G told me she would send positive Reiki energy to my wrist once I started practicing again.
So naturally, being the spiritually curious person that I am, I took that as both encouragement and a challenge.
And surprisingly… I actually managed to place my wrist down during practice.
Not for long, of course. Let’s not get carried away here. I can only tolerate it for a few minutes before my wrist starts filing formal complaints to management. But still — progress is progress. A few weeks ago, I couldn’t even imagine putting pressure on it at all.
That alone felt like a small victory.
And if I’m being honest, another thing adding to my excitement is that I recently switched from Ozempic to Mounjaro. So now in my head, I’m already imagining this magical combination of medication plus yoga movements suddenly transforming me into one of those effortlessly fit women who drink green juice voluntarily and somehow enjoy planks.
Will that happen?
Unclear.
But for now, I’m simply happy to be back on the mat — swollen wrist, awkward movements, random aches, and all.
Because sometimes returning isn’t about being fully healed first.
Sometimes you return precisely because you’re still healing.
