… and doing a lot of yoga the past week. And I’m finding I’m feeling a lot better about myself and my place in the world. It’s not as if I’m in any shape for the yoga — I’ve been a virtual couch potato since day 1 of the pandemic. I am really challenged many times during each class and have to take a downward-facing dog and remind myself about muscle memory: It will all come back to me plus I am finally ready at age 70 to acknowledge it is unlikely I will be doing headstands.
My writing on climate change had become non-existent. Over the course of the past week, I’ve been working to get in the groove again and it hasn’t bothered me at all that not many people are looking at my posts. (It used to break my heart if I didn’t make the rec list). I’m just coming up with an idea each day and working it. I had forgotten how much research it takes to write a comprehensive story on a climate issue. Some stories are better than others. Some days the words just flow through my fingers and my mind works with myriad facts with no difficulty. Many things I write about would be of little interest to any except the most devout environmentalists. (Like the one I wrote on lithium mining, a subject I really lack the expertise to cover given the complexities of clean energy sources and storage. I revisited it late yesterday after giving up on it getting any traction only to find there was a sophisticated conversation going on in which I lacked the acumen to do anything but rec comments.)
This week in climate writing has been a lot like this week in yoga. I just have to keep getting back on the mat and believe that I’ll make a little bit of progress each time I do. And that there will also be days when I just don’t have it and can’t fake it! (The lithium story is a good example. I could tell from one particular comment that I hadn’t succeeded in proving my thesis, which was that we were going to have to think totally outside the box AND realize that biodiversity and climate change are two faces of the same coin.)
I owe my revived practice to the fact that a new studio opened in town offering an irresistible deal for monthly members. I weeded my old yoga clothes out of the drawers and headed down there on opening day June 2. Saw several people I knew from the old yoga studio (which closed just before the pandemic). The first week all of the classes I attended were Waitlist only. I think people came from nearby towns because all of the other yoga studios are Covid closures.
I am aiming to do 4 classes a week and this week I’m on track to meet that goal.
I think my yoga practice says a lot about my life. There are times when I am so engaged, enthusiastic, in shape physically and mentally; times when the best part of my day are time spent on my mat. Then there are the periods when I stop going, usually due to some injury, and after a week or so I can’t imagine what it was I thought was so great about yoga anyway.
In yoga, as in life, I seem to be always looking at the clock, always wishing time would go faster so the thing I am doing (or the fact that I have nothing to do) will end. Even during the good times, I’m always waiting for Shavasana.
Today’s class was only an hour. It’s labeled Slow Yoga but the teacher keeps up a really rapid place (IMO) and incorporates many more advanced poses in her sequencing. Poses I once had no difficulty with, like bow or dancer. A clear
difference from yesterday’s teacher whose idea of Slow Yoga was more in line with what I am looking for as I reenter the yoga community: slow-paced with lots of adaptations and one-on-one posture corrections. It was heaven. She had us do a version of eagle pose balancing on blocks which all six of us were gleefully successful at achieving. And the really odd thing about the class was that four of us had taken Iyengar yoga for years three times a week with an instructor we just loved.
It’s such a surreal feeling after these past fifteen months to be inside a yoga studio. Most classes I take have at least 17 people and no one is wearing a mask while they are on their mats. Class size was changed to a max of 25 now that the state has eased restrictions. It’s hard to see how they will fit 25 people in the room. Even with the state opening, I’m still seeing more people wearing masks than not. I personally had been having a hard time to remember wearing one when mandated since I was vaccinated.
I am writing this story before I head out to today’s class. I’m wondering if I’ll decide to tackle another post on the environment this afternoon.
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