smarter than the average bear

so i finally started taking yoga. it’s been a long time coming, with people recommending that i take it for years and years. and after waiting for someone to drag me to it to no avail, i took the big step and just went on my own all alone(!) to a yoga101 class at the yoga tree. and then after that, i’ve gone to two classes in two days. so the funny thing is, and i know this is almost silly to people who actually do yoga, but i had no idea how meditative yoga is. if you see it or do yoga videos, you don’t really get a sense of that aspect of it, but for me it’s a really startling and welcome change from what i’m used to my normal mental running around internal fretting. (this may explain the frequent naps, because my brain is tired, right?)

the first night i did this hatha flow class, which was packed to the gills, and it was good and moved pretty fast, but i was able to keep up with most of it and only had to come out of a couple of poses for a couple of minutes. and then the next night was more of a beginner hatha class, which was a lot slower and taught you the poses, but we ended up holding them a lot longer, allowing us to concentrate on our breathing and be aware of ourselves in our bodies during the poses.

it’s funny because i end up recognizing a lot of the poses or similar stances from when i took kung fu, and there’s a lot of stretches which are the same and muscles that i worked on when i used to train. (somehow those warrior poses aren’t as bad if you’ve been forced to try and sit in horse stance for ten minutes at a time!)

but my big question is: if you spend a couple of hours doing yoga every evening, when are you supposed to watch tv and basketball? who has the time?

Posted at December 9, 2003 10:06 PM