2007-10-18
Last week at my Milford Adult Education class and many things nearly prevented me from achieving that level of bliss I generally expect from yoga class. First, the pervy old man who can not achieve many stretches, the one who looks like my high school french teacher but bleached in a bones drying in the desert sort of way, arrived late (as usual) and took up residence beside me. He generally chooses to yoga against a wall because he is inflexible, and so when we are all loping into downward dog, he can sit with his head propped on his boot, with his feet narrowly tucked into the wall. He is distracting because to me it seems he is not really there to stretch, he is there to watch ladies stretch while he relaxes, his feet in the air, his head cushioned by a boot. And then the fill-in yoga instructor from the previous week showed up to take the class and occupy the space beside me. Which would be fine but she reminds me of a bossier version of my cousin's wife, and she has the sexual sighing habit that I cannot stand in any human, much less a yoga instructor. Whenever we sank into child's pose or lunged into bridge, it was all breathy orgasm from her, not a regular exhale, but a "ahhhh" or "oohhh" which, paired with the boot headed old gent, made it sort of difficult for me to truly reach the level of relaxation I desire in a yoga class.
This is all to say that I need to work on appreciating what I have. The class still managed to relax me. And it reminded me, as it does, how freaking kick ass my miami yoga instructor was, despite the fact that she was free of charge through the wellness center. She extolled the benefits of having a little soft belly, for flexibiltiy sake, and she was nice and occasionally punishing, but also good at offering correction to folks in bad postures (which this instructor never did) and she managed to open and close classes with an appropriate amount of reverence for the work at hand, and did encourage us to chant without making it feel silly. The fill-in sighing instructor, she did a whole chant deal, but she was also so opressively serious that she made us feel silly ohming, and the regular instructor never namastes us out of there except in a rushed fashion, and then there is the yoga instructor I had at Shelton Adult Ed who wore makeup to class, and slouch socks, and played religious music as we stretched...so I guess it could be worse. Or I need to seek out more instructors to find some nearly as fine as that Miami lass, whose name I can't even remember.