The Golden Coin of No

Today I went to yoga class for the second time. I am childishly proud of this for some reason. It's not the forty minutes on the elliptical machine I was doing all summer. Not the two days of circuit training that made my legs shaky and tightened up my flabby chicken wings. I fell off the proverbially exercise wagon in September and just haven't been able to, or perhaps more truthfully, haven't wanted to climb back on. I'm not exactly living out my days in a fog of self-loathing either. I really do feel crappy about my lack of ambition, just not crappy enough to start working out aggressively again.

I am well aware that I need to get back on good terms with cardio, but for some reason I'm courting yoga instead. I think maybe it has to do with something my instructor said today. She read a passage about the word no. We're no strangers to no. We hear it constantly, especially if we have toddlers. We hear it at work, at home, at the bank, on the internet. No, there's no money for Hawaii this year (or next year), no you really can't fit successfully into those jeans even though you actually got them zipped up, no, aparently we aren't going to [insert event here] because you were too lazy to get the tickets before they sold out.

Training a puppy has been a real exercise in the word no. What starts off in the morning as gentle but firm admonishments blossom into full-blown shrieks by nightfall. No! (stop barking), No! (stop chewing), No! (don't you dare pee on that rug again). We probably utter the word no a hundred times a day.

Gloria Steinem taught me that no is a powerful word. And I do sometimes enjoy using it more than I should. No, I won't chair your event. No, I won't relinquish the remote control so start liking Mad Men or take a hike. No, I won't feel bad about my smallish house, my 38 year old face, my love of bacon. No, when used properly, is a word of pure empowerment. And that was the general point my yoga teacher made today. The passage she read said that we should value the No's of our daughters over the compliant yeses. That no is often our first word and should be treated with respect. The writer entreats us to hold no on our tongues like a golden coin.

Apparently it's possible to honor and love yourself by saying no. But my question is this: When does no cross the invisible line from empowerment to selfishness? How do I reconcile myself to saying no when I know that I am disappointing someone? Someone I love? Someone in need? Someone who moonlights as a vampire and wants every last drop of my time? Someone who's in a miserable place that could possibly be helped by a donation of my moments. When does saying no kill a relationship or make it stronger?

I've been reading Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now. It seemed necessary as I had been spending equal portions of time either grieving my memories of being at home with my kids, or wringing my hands about how going back to work is going to mess up this good thing I've got. Between the past and the future I was wasting a whole lotta NOW. And maybe, if I wanted to go all Oprah on you (as my lovely Fish Head friend says), I could look at yoga in terms of now. Every second I spent on the elliptical was spent in a suspended state of future. My butt's going to be tighter. My lungs are going to be stronger. My chin's going to be thinner. And while living in the future of a better me is infinitely healthier than flogging myself over my post-baby mom body, I think that maybe I choose yoga because it's kind to me today. When I sat on my new turquoise yoga mat yesterday the instructor said, "Yoga is the practice of loving yourself" and I really liked that. It's a little like some good advice I once heard about love: Love in the past is a memory. Love in the future is a fantasy. The only way to truly experience love is in the now. In this moment. So maybe it's not really about no, maybe it's more about now.