Choices for gaining your health

When I am teaching someone a yoga class and they can’t go that far into a pose because of tight muscles I say to them, “When was the last time you focused on stretching those muscles.” Usually I hear things like a long time, or never, and that is okay with me. I do think what is more of a big deal is that they thought they should be going all the way into the pose in the first place. I let my students try to understand that they are exactly where they should be in the pose; the pose is perfect for them at that moment. Now a few deep breaths while focusing on the tight muscles will create a new perfect as they slide further into the pose.
I thought I could use that theory when I have to get control of my health again. I’ll look back at how much I’ve actually put into making the healthy choices that help me keep my health and can usually see what choices I made that made my health slip. Just like my breath I can start to focus on making the right choices and I will witness myself slide right back into good health.
Here’s why this works for me. I break up a day and say on average there is 16 hours of the day that I am awake. If I meditate twice a day for 30 minutes, do yoga twice a day for about an hour each, and eat healthy meals during the day that would be about 4 hours of focusing on the right choices for dealing with whatever my major problem is. That might not sound bad because that is a lot of yoga and meditation; mixed in with the right foods I should be healthy again in no time, but jump back to thinking about what I said about 16 waking hours.
If my health goes bad again and I think that only 4 out of 16 hours are going to bring my health back, I am only fooling myself. I need to be careful not to focus on my bad health and focus on the choices I make to get my health back. I also need to do this at least 15 of the 16 hours that I am awake. Almost every choice I make needs to be made with the thought “is this the best choice for me right now.”
I guess I also have another choice when I am having problems, I can always let myself think this is the way it is and I’ll just have to learn to live with it. That choice is a downward spiral into more problems. Trust me, I know..