I was watching a workout video, the instructor shouted encouragingly, “control your body, control your movements.” Even as my body was doing the moves, my brain started to consider my bias to pay attention to, draw evidence from, the moments I think I am in control. Right now, as I haul this heavy weight, feeling tough, on top –controlling my body, controlling my movements – I am considering how many times my workouts have led me to injury. Usually though, I edit those moments, where I am not controlling my body, not controlling my movements, out of my memory, like those moments don’t even count.

Back when I was yoga-alana (before the yoga-induced hip tear that ended my yoga career), I took so much pride in controlling my body, my movements. It was like every pretzel shape my body could make affirmed me, my practice. Like each asana, if perfectly performed, could showcase my extreme willpower.

But now, as a considerably less strong, less toned, less flexible alana hauls todays’ weights around, I think about the truth: A body can be trained. A muscle strengthened. Practice can hone skill to make certain shapes. That’s not control. That’s just terms of a 4e body. It is  just effects that the set of causes and conditions of my practice manifested. Its normal.

If I controlled, I would not have had to quit that yoga practice due to injury. I would not still hurt today. I would not have had to change my story, limited the kinds of activities that present Alana can do to try and re-claim that feeling of control. I would not be stuck doing this boring workout, struggling under weights that used to feel light, as I try and regain a body, a feeling I once had before.

How is it that I fool myself so thoroughly? I puff up my ego, feel so affirmed as I do the exercise in front of me, believing I am controlling my body and movements exactly as the instructor says. When the very fact that I am hauling these baby weights, doing this less strenuous non-yoga workout is already perfect proof that I wasn’t in control in the first place. This is a compromise workout, for a compromised body, that is showing me with each labored, pained movement that I am not in control at all.