Further Adventures in Yoga

Return to gentle old-lady yoga. Substitute teacher. Looks about 13 years old.

Tonight I am to "honor my body's own unique rhythms." But what if my body marches to the beat of chocolate cupcakes and epic stretches of watching British television series on dvd? A problem.

Even more problematic, as always, is the end-of-class relaxation/meditation session. Gentle Substitute dictates, "Breathe into any place in your body still holding tension and create a bubble of warmth around that place." Oh dear. Desperately try to figure out how to breathe into the nape of my neck and my forehead and my jaw line and my knees and my arthritic foot. Haven't even approached the matter of creating warm bubbles around all those spots, when Substitute Teacher demands--gently-- that we now extend that warm bubble all around the entire body. Mad scramble to create warm bubbles and then somehow meld them into one all-embracing bubble--without, obviously, popping any bubbles. Difficult. No warm bubbles anywhere. Ruthless Gentle Substitute presses on. "Now extend that bubble outward; let your aura touch your neighbor's." Ahh. Enlightenment. "Warm bubble" = Aura. Not that this particular enlightenment has any practical application, as my Aura and I are on distant terms, at best. And now things get really sticky, because my yoga neighbor happens to be someone I know and like very much from my church. I want my Aura to touch hers; I really do.

I fail.

Somehow I always come out of yoga class feeling like I did in junior high when I'd join my group of ostensible friends at breaktime, and gradually realize I didn't get any of the jokes or references because I hadn't been invited to the party they'd had over the weekend. I bet if I'd had an Aura they'd have invited me. Geez. I probably would have been a cheerleader.