The Magic of Yoga and Chicken Soup

In which I sing the praises of my new daily yoga practice and my Mama's Chicken Soup.

In late December, after an entire month of sickness, I scribbled a goal in the margins of my planner. I didn’t write about it here, or post about it on social media (I mean, partly because I just don’t really do social media anymore), or tell any of my girlfriends. Outside of the chicken scratch in my planner, I didn’t tell a soul. 

The goal was this: take 30 yoga classes in January. 

Yoga is not new to me. I have been practicing with varying degrees of regularity for almost 20 years now. Still, 30 classes in 31 days was an aggressive goal. 

Lest you think I have unlimited free time, childcare, and disposable income to put toward a goal like this, let me set the record straight. I planned to take these classes through my Peloton app, in the makeshift home gym I have set up in our playroom, at 4:45 in the morning. While it wasn’t necessarily the way I would prefer to begin a daily yoga practice, it would have to do. So on January 1st, in keeping with the secret goal in my planner, I turned on a “30 min 90s Yoga Flow with Aditi Shah.” 

I didn’t meet my goal of 30 classes in 31 days. I fell short of my goal by 1 measly class, opting for a bubble bath one morning instead. I guess you could say that I failed. I know that in the past, I absolutely would have told you I had failed. Except, I showed up on my mat 29 times in January. Which seems like an awful lot of times to deem an outright failure. 

Not to be dramatic, but this (almost) daily yoga practice has changed everything. 

I am in a particularly challenging parenting season with my daughter, Maggie. I can speculate a whole bunch of reasons why she is having such a hard time and why that hard time is directed at me like a guided missile, but I don’t know that it matters to my point (and I don’t know that a specific record of her struggles needs to live on the internet), so I’ll just leave it at: she’s having a hard time and she’d like everyone else to have a hard time with her. It’s exhausting. It’s infuriating. 

But, somehow, those 29 yoga classes made her “I’m miserable so you should be too” attitude a little less infuriating in January. After a month of moving my body to the rhythm of my breath—after a month of breathing regularly through the discomfort of a difficult pose (looking at you, revolved half moon)—I yell less. I am calmer, and more present. I sleep better. 

I can also tolerate 30 seconds of cold exposure at the end of my shower now (IYKYK). 

Which brings me to the Chicken Soup I made this week when my oldest, Royce, woke up with a runny nose and my husband, Levi, complained of a sore throat. If that seems like a strange transition, that’s because it kind’ve is. Just know that, after RSV, Influenza A, and countless other viruses, if you told me that drinking mud might help ward off sickness, I just might add it to my cold exposure-apple cider vinegar-elderberry syrup-turmeric-chicken soup routine. 

Back to the magic soup. I’m not saying Homemade Chicken Soup is the end-all, be-all cure. Even with all the garlic and ginger I add, the “healing properties” I swear it has may very well be chalked up to Placebo Effect. Either way, it feels good on a sore throat and brings me joy to make and eat. It makes me feel like my mom is here, taking care of me, rubbing my back and telling me I’m doing a good job. It is comfort in a bowl. And it’s just easier to listen to my daughter tell me she wishes she lived in a different family while I’m taking deep yoga breaths and eating comfort in a bowl.