There's No Such Thing as a Comeback
Oct 10, 2025There’s No Such Thing as a Comeback
As a yoga teacher, I’ve worked with students who have gone through injuries, pregnancies, illnesses, and even cancer. And the same question always comes up: Will I lose my poses?
We worry so much about “losing” something. But here’s the truth I’ve seen—both in my students and in myself: you never really lose a pose. The poses just change. Sometimes you’ll be able to do everything again. Sometimes you won’t. And whatever happens—that’s okay.
At six months postpartum, I’m living this lesson in real time. I’ve been practicing yoga for nearly twenty-five years, and asana has always come fairly easily to me. So it’s been shocking how hard my practice feels right now.
At first, I thought of it as a comeback. I imagined myself bouncing back into my old body, my old strength, my old practice. But then I realized something important: there is no such thing as a comeback.
I’m not coming back. I’m a mom now. My body is different. My baby needs me to carry him and feed him. I’m breastfeeding, which means my body doesn’t feel like my own. My shoulders and upper back are perpetually hunched forward, and suddenly backbends—the poses that once came so easily—feel impossibly far away. My strength has shifted. My time has shrunk.
Gone are the days when I’d practice yoga for two hours, grab a cinnamon roll, and head to a Pilates class in the afternoon. Now, if I get one hour—or even fifteen minutes—on my mat, that’s a gift. My little dictator, my son, decides when and how long I can practice.
And here’s the revelation: yoga teaches us to be present. It reminds us of impermanence. A postpartum body is a living, breathing, temporary example of that truth. The only place to be is where you are right now. There’s no rewind button, no fast-forward.
Sometimes I yearn for my body of ten years ago—before I tore my ACL and fractured L2—when I could effortlessly float through Advanced Series. But that was then. I can’t go back. And truthfully, I don’t want to.
Because life doesn’t move backward, forward is the only direction God gave us.
There is no comeback. There is only moving forward—into the body we have today, into the practice we are given now, into the life that keeps unfolding. That is the real gift of yoga—to accept where we are now and recognize that it won't last.
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