Yes, I’m back to trying yoga after a year’s hiatus (or should we say a false start a year ago). I have been digging around and finding yoga instruction that was much better than what I had before. Not like a drill sargent. Have only been at it a few days but Monday night, with a cheap cheap audio I’d found online that day, via an emphasis on breathing into poses I was liking it, feeling like this was more what I’d been looking for, a chance to just be in a posture instead of it seeming like a series of disconnected stretching and balancing exercises, and was very surprised that I was even able to do a downward dog with heels on the floor the way this particular audio led into it. How did that happen? But there I was, despite my being a wobbly beginner, finding my heels on the floor by breathing and stretching that straight spine and sucking in the abdomen. And it felt so easy. And I’m doing my best to not push as the last thing I want to do is hurt myself. By the end of what seemed a very fluid practice I was blissful smiling and feeling so unexpectedly nurtured that, though I tell myself such an ancient art should be able to be pursued without making a money hog of it with unnecessary paraphernalia, I started thinking of things like a yoga mat and an honest-to-god pair of yoga pants. Charcoal gray. Not so I’d feel all yogi like but because my jeans, though I wear them big and baggy, were feeling constricting with some of my very basic beginner poses.
Anyway, Tuesday evening, after the 45 minutes of Hatha and lots and lots of breathing concentration I was feeling marginally more at ease after an out-of-kilter day. Things did feel slightly better though H.o.p., while I breathed and worked on postures, was continually calling to me to take a look at this and that and this and that, but at least not mocking me as he had done in the morning, which had, before doing our language and science and etc., sent me all disgruntled to stare instead at the kitchen sink which was, indeed, stopped up again, just like it was stopped up again yesterday, and unstopped, and the day before that and the day before that.
Though not writing (still), but feeling a little better after the 45 minutes of Hatha it had occurred to me that now was a good time to go ahead and get the vacuuming done as the floor was cleaned up.
Last week Marty remarked on how this vacuum was wearing well after our going through vacuums like crazy, one vacuum breaking after another. I agreed.
Tonight, I popped in the earbuds of the iPod and proceed to vacuum. Within ten to twenty seconds I smelled something funny…like something burning. Cut off the vacuum and flipped it over and there was one of H.o.p.’s old socks jammed up in it. And the smoke poured forth.
A sock. I guess it got sucked up when I pushed the vacuum under the couch/futon.
Long after I extracted the sock, the smoke continued to pour, and I sat and watched.
But it was one of those days, despite my uhm four days of endeavoring to find serenity via yoga. Off kilter and disjointed. Nothing productive happening. All effort for naught, for naught.
I’ve decided the yoga pants can wait but I may go ahead and get a mat.
The idea of yoga practice being a time of sacred space is going to have to include, as part of that sacred space, a ten year old laughing at my fumblings and doing his energetic best to distract. Even if I say, ok, you try this position out and see if you can do it, and he replies oh there’s no way he could do it, he still laughs uproariously over my efforts. “You’re wobbling! You’re wobbling!”
If I don’t cease to be high entertainment in a week, I’ll have to accept my yoga routine as a comedic act.
I will put a tip jar at my side.
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