yoga

Little-known facts about Laura-Marie...when I was a teenager, I bought a cardboard box of books from a stranger.  Maybe it was ten dollars.  In the box was a book called Nova Yoga.  It was a yellowing mass-market paperback from the 1970s.

I read the book and started doing yoga in my bedroom on the blue shag carpet before school in the mornings.  I liked how it made me feel.

Then when I was a young adult first moved to Sacramento, I needed to take care of myself more.  I looked up yoga classes and somehow decided on a Dharma Yoga class at the Sierra 2 Center.  It was far from home.

Don't know how I worked up the bravery to walk into my first class.  I weighed at least a hundred pounds more than anyone else there.  The other students were small retired white ladies.  It was a morning class.

Well, it turned out I found the perfect teacher for me.  Patient, caring, compassionate.  She worked with me.  We became friends--I brought her zines.  (Later I found out Ming knew her also, having taken a meditation class from her.)

I ran out of money and stopped going to yoga, but I went for a good couple years.

Years later I did some yoga at Wellspring Women's Center for free.  There was a good teacher there, and then I had a drill sergeant teacher who was terrible for me.

Then I joined this co-op studio called Yoga Seed--I did the 30 days for thirty dollars deal.  They had an All Bodies class I loved.  There was even someone in a wheelchair in that class.  I felt totally welcome.

That was great for me, but again, ran out of money.  I have never been gainfully employed in my life.  Yoga Seed said, pay what you can--if you can't afford it, come anyway.  But in reality it was emotionally weird and of course they wanted you pay--I never went without paying.

A few summers ago, Ming and I were staying with my parents on the coast, back when my dad was still alive.  Ming and I joined a yoga studio with the 30 days for thirty dollars deal.  We went to some good classes there, consistently attending a chair yoga class, and I learned I liked doing yoga with Ming next to me.

Again I had to be brave to walk in, but I've never had a yoga teacher bat an eye at my size.  I don't know if I've lucked out, or if they get trained not to bat their eyes or what.

Since moving to Las Vegas I've attended a chair yoga class geared toward seniors, maybe 50 people in the class?  It was low cost, but I didn't like the teacher at all, and it was maybe 40 minute's drive away in Henderson.

I love yoga for all sorts of reasons.  I like the breathing.  I like how it's meditative and calming yet strengthening.  I like concentrating for an hour or however long, and the process of a class, working from warming up to shivasana.  I like the feeling that I'm doing something good for myself.  I like trusting a teacher.

Most of all, I like being in my body, inhabiting my entire body in a happy way.  Most of the time I go around very cerebral.  Well, I have a lot of feelings too.  But all the work I do is with my mind, you know, being a writer.  It's easy for me to kind of ignore my body.  But when I do yoga, I'm blissfully living in it entirely.  My consciousness fills my body.

The only exercise I like is yoga and dancing.  I used to like walking but not as much anymore.

Except for as a teenager, I've never managed to do yoga at home.  I hope one day I feel the spaciousness.  Our house right now, it's small and has too much stuff in it.  I daydream about clearing out a room to be a yoga room, but it's hard to manage.  With only space heaters in the winter and swamp coolers in the summer, it's seldom a comfortable temperature.  The house is a struggle.

Sometimes I do tadasana, in everyday life, mountain pose, feeling my strong mountain energy.  Well, am I doing it right?  Probably not.  But something like it.