A week without yoga was enough to convince me to go back to it, and the other things that seem to have improved my PTSD symptoms.

My HRV score was a 6 this morning, which for me means I can have an ok day if I can avoid additional stress or a potential meltdown if I can’t. Considering how my week went, I felt that was surprisingly high.

I have eaten my way through every calorie available to me, yelled at someone yesterday (which may or may not have been warranted but not something I usually do in any situation), can’t seem to push through the mental fog of anxiety, cried most evenings and can’t bridge between what I want to do and what I can do. It’s not pretty.

There are certain factors that made this week harder to deal with, but there are also certain factors that have made me less capable of dealing with it, chief among them that I was not taking care of myself. In the name of science, it’s time to get back on the mat (new goal is to stop checking the time to see how close I am to the end of the video, which I do frequently and which it turns out is really hard for me not to do) and back to taking the time every day to consciously pause and breathe.

These seem like such little things, but now that I’ve experienced their big effects I’ve become a believer. And a practitioner. Who needs a lot of practice.