Everyone talks about yoga the way they talk about sex when they finally get good at it or the way a few friends from [insert high school, college, grad school, work, summer] talk about [insert pot, shrooms, Levain chocolate chip cookies, God, Clapton, David Foster Wallace, Princeton]. I tried yoga about a decade ago (and yes, I am now old enough to be able to toss around phrases like ‘a decade ago’). I hated it.
In short, yoga was this thing. That I tried, didn’t like, moved on from.
This past year, which in David Foster Wallace lingo would be dubbed, The Year of the Shit, I fell. Back stairs, ice, kids calling 911, you get the picture (this was, like, tenth in the list of shit things). I was in bed in the un-fun way for a couple of weeks.
Brief detour here to say that I go to the gym every day. I’m pretty fit. I take care of myself. I like playing sports but I’m hopeless at dancing. So I loathe any exercise class that involves, say, “grapevining” or generally humiliating dance-cum-jazzercise moves. Not because I am embarrassed. Because I find it HILARIOUS. The kind of hilarity reserved for eighth grade math class or someone else’s kid’s French horn concert. Anyway, I whack the crap out of a baseball and smack a squash ball but I don’t like to keep score. I just like to hit and laugh and run around.
So on one hand, I always felt too bitchy for yoga. I don’t want to breathe for an hour. I have to do that all day long. But on the other hand, I’m too nice for organized sports. No, you take the point. Good shot!
When I fell, I fell hard. On the ice. And my friend Maryanne bugged me about yoga. Not in an annoying way. not in the fervor of the recently converted. Just in a “you’ve been a hermit this whole Year of the Shit and now it’s time to emerge” way. So I did.
And of course, I found yoga or it found me when I needed it.
I still think I could do without the ooommmming. But I like doing the difficult poses, breathing, and stretching in the 100 degree heat (yes, it’s hot yoga). I like being able only to focus on yoga at the time I’m doing it. And there’s no score. I’ve taught the kids a few poses and I manage to get through the classes (all except one) without dissolving into a fit of laughter.
It’s nice to find new experiences, new tastes, new friends in my late 30s.
Namaste, bitches!
“OMG I sing the body electric…”
One response to “Yoga for Bitches & Coconut Mushrooms with Asparagus”
Unlike you, I love dancing. That and walking used to be my main form of exercise. I tried yoga once in college and found it annoying.
Then about three years ago, there was a school shooting at my alma mater. I had graduated a couple of years previous, and thank God no one I knew was hurt, but it really shook me. I found myself Googling “free yoga classes” and found one in my neighborhood. Now I practice 2-3 times a week and work once a week at a yoga studio in exchange for free classes.
This is a long way of saying that I know what you mean about yoga finding you when you need it.
And this recipe looks delish!