My yoga practice isn't beautiful. It happens in my living room on an IKEA rug that's too small, with a floor lamp casting uneven shadows across the wall. I don't have a mat. I don't have proper form. What I have is a body that's been hunched over a computer for eight hours, designing branding packages for clients three states away, and about twenty minutes before I need to start thinking about dinner.

I moved to this cottage on River Road in Ravenswood six months ago—1889 Folk Victorian, twelve-foot ceilings, original windows that let in cold air and river fog. My desk sits in what was probably a sewing alcove, tucked beside a bay window that looks out at the Ohio. It's perfect for work. Terrible for my posture.

The evening yoga started by accident. One night in October I got up from my desk at 8 PM and literally couldn't straighten my spine. I stood there, bent like a question mark, and thought: this is not sustainable. So I did what any millennial does—I pulled up a YouTube video called "Yoga for Desk Workers" and tried to follow along.

Your body keeps score. Eight hours hunched forward means eight hours you'll spend trying to unfold yourself back into a human shape. —  Rachel Kim

I was terrible at it. Still am, honestly. My hamstrings are so tight that touching my toes feels like a distant dream. My wrists complain through every downward dog. The first time I tried cat-cow, something in my mid-back popped so loudly that Yuki from next door texted to ask if I was okay.

But here's what I've learned: it doesn't matter if you're graceful. What matters is that you counteract the damage. Forward fold to stretch out the constant forward hunch. Neck rolls to release the tension from staring at screens. Shoulder openers to undo the keyboard crouch. Thread-the-needle to unknot the spot where all the stress lives.

My routine, if you can call it that, is embarrassingly simple. I push the coffee table against the wall. I put on my wool socks because the hardwood is cold. I do maybe six or seven poses—cat-cow, child's pose, downward dog (badly), pigeon (even worse), some kind of seated twist that probably has a real name. Sometimes I hold each pose for thirty seconds. Sometimes for three minutes. Depends on where it hurts most that day.

Tom, who lives a few houses down and runs every morning at 6 AM, once told me that consistency matters more than intensity. "Twenty minutes every day beats an hour once a week," he said, while fixing my porch step without being asked. I think about that a lot. My practice isn't impressive, but it's mine, and it happens almost every weeknight around 7 PM.

The cottage helps, in its way. The living room is small enough that I can't overthink the space. The radiator kicks on around 6:30 and warms the room to almost comfortable. There's something grounding about doing yoga in a 135-year-old house—the creaky floorboards, the wavy window glass, the sense that bodies have been moving through this space for over a century. Mine is just the latest one trying to unknot itself after a long day.

Last week Emma stopped by around 7:15, saw me in some awkward hip-opener situation on my too-small rug, and just quietly backed out of the room. When I emerged twenty minutes later she had made tea. "I do the same thing," she said. "Except mine is at 10 PM and I mostly just lie on my back and groan." It's nice, knowing I'm not the only one with an unglamorous practice.

I'm not trying to achieve anything profound here. I'm not seeking enlightenment or transformation. I'm just trying to make it so my neck doesn't hurt when I turn my head. So my shoulders can drop away from my ears. So I can stand up straight without my lower back staging a protest.

The other night—Wednesday at 7:38 PM, to be exact—I finished my little routine and sat cross-legged for a minute, just breathing. The radiator hissed. River fog pressed against the bay window. My shoulders sat in their actual sockets instead of up near my jaw. And I thought: this is enough. This awkward, imperfect, twenty-minute practice on a too-small rug. It's enough.

Most evenings I still end with tight hips and achy wrists. My forward folds are still laughably shallow. But I'm undoing the day, bit by bit, pose by unpolished pose. And tomorrow I'll sit at that desk again, hunch over my laptop again, and at 7:23 PM I'll close the screen and start the whole ungraceful process of unfolding myself again.

It's not beautiful. But it's honest. And some days, honest is the best kind of practice there is.

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