I Am Not So Much "Enlightened"
I want to update more frequently now, especially since I am DONE WITH THE SEMESTER (that still needs to be typed in all caps, I am sorry) and have time on my hands. Problem is, I couldn’t think of anything to write about, since my conversations with Peanut lately have tended to start with “Ow” and end with “Don’t you DARE blog that.”The “ow” comes from the fact that Peanut and I now belong to the same gym, which we actually frequent, and we do things to ourselves that hurt a lot so we can justify the sauna. It’s actually very sad. A few days last week we did yoga. Now, I really like yoga. I need to increase my flexibility and I think that’s a great way to do it. The thing is… I am kind of really bad at yoga.
And not the physical part of yoga. I mean, I am not great, but I can hold my own with the balance-y stretchy part of the class. I even managed to balance all of my bodyweight on my wrists for a few second as I let my knees rest on my elbows. (Don’t ask. Just… don’t ask). (And maybe a few seconds after the balancing there was embarrassing falling down. But whatever). The point is, I can do the parts of yoga that are physical. The mental stuff? I have a really, REALLY hard time with.
I just cannot relax and meditate and take it seriously. And I DO take it seriously. Or at least, I want to. I believe in the whole thing- the relaxation and the meditation and the increasing your health and all of that. But… I can’t do it. I just cannot do it. We start the meditation stuff, and here is me:
Yoga Guy: “Ok, just relax. Let your mind clear. Focus on breathing.”
Me: (Ok, inhale, exhale… hey. Am I the only one facing to the right? Hmm, maybe if I just turn a little… oh, wait, breathing, focus on breathing)
YG: “Feel all your tension drain out of you, empty your mind…”
Me: (Empty my… empty your mind? Oh, so the woman who totally held up the metro for like TWENTY MINUTES this afternoon because she couldn’t figure out how to WORK a TURNSTILE, which for the love of GOD people, is not THAT HARD, and even if it is that hard, OPEN YOUR DAMN EYES and OBSERVE for a minute, because there are SEVEN HUNDRED OTHER PEOPLE going through them and you can FIGURE IT OUT, that one, she was simply doing yoga? Is that it? Because…”
YG: “You are very calm now.”
Me: (Shit. Focus. Breathing. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale… I feel like a complete and utter moron.)
YG: “Ok, now you will learn what surrender means. It is not just physical surrender, but emotional and spiritual surrender as well.”
Me: (That sounds kind of nice. Maybe I really should put an effort into trying that. Just… let it all go. Don’t try too hard to force life to go my way. Just… surrender. Except… Well, what if I do that, then anyone I meet won’t actually be meeting the real me, and if I ever want to be myself again there will be this whole thing about how I’ve “changed” or wasn’t “real” and that is just something I don’t want to deal with.)
YG: “Just feel yourself let go…”
Me: (did I actually just… Good Lord. I allowed myself a second, while doing yoga, to consider this “surrendering” thing, and I rationalized myself out of it. I can’t even pretend that I am going to be able to do this while I am actually doing it. Christ.)
YG: “Ok, now just lie down now. Lie on your back and let your whole body relax, getting in touch with the one spirit that unites us all…”
Me: (Oh, right. I can’t even fake an understanding of surrender, now I need to get in touch with the one unifying spirit? We don’t even have a unifying theory of physics, for Christ sake. And the only way I feel united to all of these people is that we use these same relatively disgusting mats every class, and the Plague was a relatively uniting thing, just ask Poe. And as long as I am thinking about physics and dark literature and all, that pipe on the ceiling looks awfully heavy, and if it fell down, it would shatter my pelvis. I wonder how badly that would hurt….”
YG: “Just spend a few seconds enjoying this glorious feeling of peace and one-ness.”
Me: (Dude, every second brings me closer to Pelvis Shattering.)
So as you can see, my one person monologue during the relaxation period in yoga is less “enlightenment” and more “garbled nonsense that leads to no good.”
Sigh.
But I am improving my plow position!!
posted by Citycat @ 3:55 PM
<< Home