Yoga Class

Here is an amusing account of one of my friend's experience with yoga, which she originally published on her own blog, Family Affairs. Coincidentally, the yoga teacher with the yoga logo on the side of the car and trying hard not to get stressed out by the traffic was yours truly. :o)

Yesterday, I went to a yoga class with a girlfriend who is a yoga teacher. She drove and we were running really late, but because she's got her yoga logo on the side of her car so she had to try really hard not to get stressed - drivers of cars with yoga logo's on the side must not, under any circumstances succumb to road rage.

I am so rubbish at yoga it's ridiculous. My friend's 19 year old daughter came too and she and I went right to the back in an effort to be ignored. You need such strength and discipline. Some of the moves involved lifting your body off the mat with your arms and swinging your legs underneath you to the back. Not a hope in hell of doing that. Then we had to do headstands and feet-over-head things and then I looked over at friend's daughter and realised that the two of us had inadvertently ended up in the storage cupboard.

I really enjoyed it though. I had been to a jumping about class the day before and it had all been a bit too frenetic. One woman even managed to give herself a nose bleed and instead of putting her head between her legs and sitting the rest of the class out she disappeared for two minutes and came back with a thick blue paper hand towel, stuffed the whole lot up her nose and carried on doing the (bloody) grapevine as if nothing was wrong.

It was much better to be in the yoga class, trying to keep my thoughts calm and focused and trying not to fall asleep and snore, which I have been known to do in the past. I have also been known to sit bolt upright during the mediation period having completely forgotten where I was.

I can't do any of the chanting yet, although I noticed a teeny weeny om-like sound tiptoed out of my mouth whilst everybody else was sounding like a chiming bell all chanting in unison because I knew I wouldn't be heard.

I was so relaxed by the end that I picked up somebody else's socks and walked out without my handbag. Friend had to go back for all her rings which she'd taken off.

Lovely comatose state of calm... Long may it last!