So this morning I accompanied my stepmother, I, to her and my first ever yoga class. Having only ever done videos at home, featuring plink-y-plink music and annoying instructors, I was interested to see if doing the "real thing" would spark an interest and turn me into one of those long, lean, super-flexible people like Madonna - minus the scary arms.
Part of me loves the idea of yoga. I appreciate the meditative quality of the practice and the chance to silence my inner thoughts and try to achieve some balance. Are you laughing yet? I have a prime example of the "ever-chattering monkey mind". That's a real, live yoga term, people, and getting these cerebral primates to shut the hell up is a Herculean challenge. And balance? You all know I have about as much inner balance as a drunk with vertigo. But yet, I am drawn in by the possibility that another me could exist who is cool, calm and collected...and can bend over and touch her palms to the floor.
While trying to get pregnant with #1, a long thirteen months, I dabbled in meditation and alternative medicine. I was wiling to try everything. Told by my OB/GYN there was nothing wrong with me and I should just relax, I turned to the world of crystals and herbs to solve my problems, since sitting around doing nothing was not going to work. I started taking a million pills from the health food store several times a day. I even bought a visualization CD called Fertile Heart. Yes, me. And while H still scoffs at what he calls my "herbs and bullshit", I got pregnant that very same month. So while I am not exactly a convert, I do have some alternative leanings.
So I thought to myself, how bad could it be, taking a yoga class in Florida with I? Having seen enough advertisements for yoga classes outside of local gyms, it seems every Tom, Dick and Hari Krisha was doing it. Most without a side of incense and many with a smoothie at the juice bar afterward. This would just be another workout.My father was in charge of finding the location. He chose a tony part of his area and got us two slots in the ten-thirty class. Maybe we'd take a Pilates class after depending how this place was.
We roll up in front of the Sage Court Yoga Center, and I realize there will be no juice bar, or Pilates. This place looks like somebody's house, actually three houses, surrounding a lovely, if slightly shabby, courtyard garden. Walking through the gate, we notice the house on the right is the Sage Court Birthing Center. Now, I am familiar with tri-state area birthing centers, where you get your midwifery with a side of Lysol. This place had Levelor blinds, not quite drawn evenly, which, along with the earthenware pots arranged randomly and a hair-filled cat brush on the steps, made me think any kind of water birth taking place there was happening in a grimy, cracked bathtub.
Soldiering on, we enter the yoga building and are kindly greeted and ushered in to the studio. Not having been smacked in the face with a wall of patchouli, I was comforted, until I saw our instructor, Yogi Dev. Wearing worn, white linen pajama pants, a Montego Bay t-shirt and a white wool cap, our elderly yogi sported an eighteen inch long, braided, gray beard. He got up from his sheep skin rug (that I itched to dunk in bleach) to great us, stepping deftly around his giant, three foot wide gong. A gong!!! Yogi Long Grey Braid asked us to grab a mat and a spot, pointing to the space next to the fifty-something gal with the henna-ed hair and paisley yoga rug. Rug, not hygienic foam mat, RUG. And at this point I realized where I was. I had just walked into my worst nightmare.
We begin our session, after informing Yogi LGB that we were new to yoga. He explained we would be beginning with a chant. it began with "Om" and had about fifteen indecipherable syllables after that. Is there no teleprompter? This isn't even English! I didn't study!!! This was going to be the longest hour of my life.
OK, it actually wound up being pretty great. I surrendered to the New-Age-y part of myself and got into it. The movements were challenging and felt great - and the fifty-something woman kicked my ass, as currently, I'm a little less flexible than a yard stick. But Yogi LGB's voice, along with his smile-y Santa Clause eyes, at odds with his wirey frame, made me feel relaxed and comfortable despite my lack of bendiness. I could have done without his bits of info about certain poses priming my glandular system and cleansing the lymph system around the breasts, or the Frog Pose increasing sexual energy (I really had to stifle a gag at that moment), but I really enjoyed his gentle reminders to focus my energy in a positive place and on increasing my own capacity for love. The gong turned out to be pretty awesome. During the last pose, Corpse Pose, also known as lying flat on your back relaxing, he banged his gong (at which point the T.Rex song from the 80's jumped into my head - be quite musical monkeys!!!), at varying speeds and intensities and you really could feel a vibration in the room.
Sadly, as the time for class to end drew near, my mind drifted back to what I had to do. "Enough with the gong already LGB, I have to get back and get the kids ready for their grandfather to take them fishing!", I thought. Leaving class, I felt a little disoriented, like after a massage. And this is where I wonder if yoga is really for me. Could I really get that relaxed for an hour and return to the world with the intensity with which I need to operate in my current life? Or is it that, to suit my personality, I have created a life which is too intense for me to be able to operate in a lower gear, such as yoga suggests?
I currently, do not have time to squeeze yoga into my schedule, since the only physical activity I have time for better reduce the size of my ass, and lying on the floor for ten minutes don't exactly burn off those cookies I ate last night. But today's experience has taught me that taking time to slow down and focus once in a while might not be a bad thing, and perhaps a class here and there, as time permits, might help me find some of that elusive balance.
Or maybe I'll just go buy a gong.
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