Good Morning Kossacks and Welcome to Morning Open Thread
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Help yourself to a morning danish below and then follow me over the jump.
A number of years ago, my husband and I lived in a very small community on the north Florida Gulf coast. The number of residents there at any one time was probably no more than a few hundred, with that number increasing in the winter when the northern winter visitors would come down for several months.
There were two small churches in the community and not much else. One of the long time residents there was a cancer survivor. She told us that one of the things that helped her in her fight against cancer was getting involved in yoga. She said that yoga helped her become more serene, centered, and physically stronger. She was self taught and much of her knowledge came from reading about yoga which she practiced it every day.
She decided to start a free yoga class for anyone who was interested. The church she was active in said we could use their small fellowship hall for our classes on two conditions: first, each participant would contribute one dollar for the use of the fellowship hall and second, the classes should be called exercise classes not yoga. And so we began twice weekly yoga, I mean exercise classes, each of which lasted an hour and a half.
Depending on the season, there would be a few as four people attending class or as many as fifteen. Because I was a former runner, I was not particularly flexible and the classes helped me to improve my flexibility. But what the classes really did was to help me to become more relaxed and serene. Eventually, my husband joined. He was even less flexible than me and had some back problems. Since yoga helps build core body strength, he found that while taking classes his back problems were non-existent.
I now wish I had continued to go to yoga classes after we moved away. My friend still teaches them twice a week even after all these years.
What many people do not know is that the people at #OccupyWallStreet have been meeting for yoga classes from nearly the first day. It is one of the many community building programs that the protesters engage in. It is also a way for them to relieve the stress of the occupation.
Monday, I turned on the #OccupyWallStreet Live Stream to see that the yoga class had gone off site and was being held on the sidewalk in front of the Citi Bank building. Wow! I could not believe what I was seeing. There they were, about 20 of them with their yoga matts set up in a line so as not to block pedestrian traffic and they were doing their yoga routine. One policeman came up to them and simply told them that as long as they did not block the doorway to the bank, they were fine. A number of the people on the street stopped to watch and even clapped for them. Live Stream interviewed one man and when asked what he thought about it, he said it was "spectacular!" I thought so too.
Let's hope that today will be a spectacular one for each of you too. What is on your mind today?