About a month ago, I started going to yoga classes with my wonderful wife in an attempt to regain some flexibility, perhaps slowly get back into “skating shape” and just enjoy a little adult time with my spouse. It’s been fun, mostly because our yoga instructor is patient, tolerates my constant chatter, and will let me cheat a bit on the poses when they involve grabbing parts of your lower body.
I have all of the hip and lower leg flexibility of a Barbie doll. Some things don’t rotate in the intended direction.
Empowered, perhaps stupidly, by this low-key yoga, I decided to take a class at a hotel. How hard could “flow yoga” be anyway? It was not a pretty sight or set of sounds. Here’s how not to do yoga:
Enter the boat pose, then announce that your boat is sinking. Or being boarded by pirates. There’s still some latent pirate fear in the Antilles.
Slip out of the tree pose into the “shrubbery pose,” and continue falling to the floor in “lawn clippings pose.” I’m very lopsided when it comes to the tree poses, as my left side balance is still uneven due to a 5-year old broken leg (even an ankle break affects hip flex, a major factor in balance), and my right side has muscle memory from years of marching band downfields.
Create your own sequence of dog poses. I went from downward dog to upward dog to “hungry dog” and “pastry eating dog.” Put in the proper order this transforms a basic Sun Salutation into a Breakfast Salutation. And the way I completed the poses it resembled more of a McDonald’s Dollar Menu tribute than anything reflecting the light and peace within me. Non-sequiteur: It’s worth seeing It’s Complicated just for the downward-facing dog joke, after having survived a month of yoga.
I’ll close by saying that the light in me honors the spicy chutney in you, and I hope to find peace in the place where my iced coffee and my now strained back meet, most likely in my office chair.
