Hello, friends,

I've spent most of the past week sick.

And despite all of my mindfulness and yoga practices… I’m here to tell you that I am not a very good sick person. Ha!

I'm impatient. Irritated. Unhappy about the biological requirement to stop, heal, and recover. My mind wants to skip ahead to the part where I'm better (and get to rest of my own volition). My mind gets frustrated by poor sleep and a very chapped nose. It worries about disappointing clients when I have to cancel sessions. It starts researching every possible remedy – herbal, natural, pharmacological – hoping something will speed things along.

I’m not particularly well skilled at relying heavily on other people, either. My partner has been doing the lion’s share of caring for our dog, preparing meals, and generally keeping things running around the house while I've spent more time in bed than usual.

The funny thing is that when I first start getting sick, my mind always seems convinced it’s going to be a one- or two-day inconvenience. But that’s rarely how illness works, is it?

The body needs time.

Time to recognize an invader. Time to mount a defense. Time to do the extraordinary and complex work of healing. And then more time to recover afterward.

As I was thinking about this, I realized how much it mirrors the work I do every day as a yoga therapist.

Many of us want healing, strength, flexibility, resilience, or relief from pain as quickly as possible. We want the body, mind, and heart to change on our preferred timeline. But just as the immune system cannot be rushed, meaningful change in the body and nervous system doesn’t happen overnight.

The most lasting transformations usually come through small, consistent actions repeated over time. A few minutes of practice. A new breathing habit. A subtle shift in awareness. Tiny adjustments that may not feel dramatic in the moment but gradually accumulate into something significant.

Time for me to remember – and practice – what I preach, so to speak: healing and growth have their own timeline. The body has its own wisdom. Our task is not to force the process but to participate in it.

One of the first days I was sick this time, I pulled a card from my A Yogic Path deck. The card was tamas (pictured above).

In Ayurveda, tamas is heaviness, density, inertia, and stillness. The card descriptor reads:

“You are in a period of hibernation, which is sometimes needed to blossom into a butterfly. Your body is between lines of a poem, notes of a song, steps of a dance. Use this time to fully rejuvenate your system, allowing proper rest and food, knowing when it is time to emerge from your cocoon and show the world the gifts you have been cultivating. Stillness is only balanced when followed by action.”

I had to laugh. In my grumpy, tired, sore throat, snotty-nosed state, it was exactly the reminder I needed.

There is a purpose to the body wanting rest. A purpose to sleeping more. A purpose to congestion, fatigue, and all the other inconvenient symptoms that accompany sickness. The body is not malfunctioning. It is doing exactly what it was designed to do. It’s healing in exactly the way it’s designed to.

The rub here is that my mind often wants a different timeline.

And that’s where yoga practice lives.

One of the foundational teachings of yoga is that suffering arises not necessarily from what is happening, but from our resistance to what is happening. Sure, the illness itself may be unpleasant. But the mental argument with reality – this shouldn’t be happening, I don’t have time for this, I should be better by now, etc – creates the psycho-emotional suffering.

The yoga practice is accepting what is actually happening.

Not pretending it’s enjoyable or fun when it may not be.
But simply acknowledging: This is what is right now.

Many people assume yoga only happens during class on the mat. But that’s actually just practice for Real Life. Yoga can be practiced while sitting in traffic. It can be practiced during a difficult conversation. It can be practiced while caring for an aging parent, cooking dinner, experiencing pain, or navigating grief. It can be practiced on your deathbed. And it can certainly be practiced when you’re sick.

As I slowly emerge from this period of forced “hibernation”, I’m reminded that none of us ever really graduate from the practice. If we think we’ve become an advanced yogi, all life has to do is present us with something we don’t want, and we’ll quickly discover where our edges still are.

One of my edges, apparently, is being sick. And that’s okay.

The practice continues...

In sickness and in health,
Nicole

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The Yoga of Being Sick

Nicole Bratt Yoga