It felt like someone was trying to kill me. The room was spinning and I was flat on the floor, sweating, unable to get up. Gentle Yoga, with Jane Adams, has yoga training sessions that had been calm, serene, and relaxing. Jane is a mild, soft-spoken woman with simple slow moves and poses. As I followed her soothing instructions, I found myself in positions that it had not been in for a long time — if ever. Most of the stretches actually felt good -- until we tried balance training. I knew something was up when I started to sweat and felt dizzy. Balancing with one foot in front of the other, rocking back and forth made me realize that I could not pass a Fremont County Deputy Sherriff's sobriety test. Lying on the floor, we turned to the left, turned to the right, stood up, sat down, fight, fight, fight. Repeating the routine resulted in even more sweating and dizziness leading to a crescendo of overwhelming nausea. I could not sit up without feeling like passing out — lying down was the only option. Like many of my patients, I am from Idaho but live in the state of denial and did not take my blood pressure. After all, why would I want to take my blood pressure when I knew very well that it would be low? When I said this to MK, she looked at me like I was a Dufus. I can’t really blame her, but the Dufus who didn’t take his own blood pressure is the same Dufus who figured out that part of the problem was the pill he had taken right before yoga balance training. Now I take my blood pressure medicine at bedtime and find that I am much more balanced. I sleep like a Dufus-log and get to do morning yoga with MK and Jane.
In addition to limbering up, I have discovered the benefits of finding my inner yogi. As yoga newbies, we are told to strive to bow the light within us, improve the flow of prana in our energy channels and focus on the universal sound of our consciousness. Whatever all that means.
There is much more to yoga than stretching and improving the flow of my prana. For one thing, I get to pose. Not like the outward, internet selfie-posers — yoga posers direct their energy inwardly and have actual poses with real names. What fun! Bowing to the light, I become peacefully confident as I quietly stand in mountain or tree pose in namasté. Other yoga poses do not lend toward doing namasté but have interesting names like Warrior One or Dog Down. Nothing like doing poses with really cool names and finding your peacefully confident inner yogi.
Namasté is a Hindu, non-contact respectful greeting. It honors the opposite person or group and can be used at any time of day. In Hindi, namasté is basically a respectful way of saying hello and also goodbye. Over thousands of years, it has shifted from meaning “I bow to you” to “I bow to the divine in you.” In Idaho, I have found that namasté softens the potential for personal conflicts. When someone pushes a fist or elbow out at me for a fist bump to avoid shaking hands, I assume namastaé while doing the mountain pose instead of giving them a retaliatory hug or having to restrain myself from punching them in the beak. This pose can be a great deadpan response to jokes that I don’t want to hear, or annoying questions that I don’t really want to answer. There is nothing like finding inner peace when you are surrounded by outward turmoil like that created by a bunch of fist-bumping bozos who have lost their inner yogis.
MK and I recently introduced our newfound yoga fun to a woman of our same vintage. She humored us and accepted our invitation for a session of Gentle Yoga at our cabin on Bills Island. I thought she would benefit from gentle, peaceful, stretching and bowing. She is wound even tighter than MK and soon discovered that she just couldn’t get her prana flowing on that cold morning in February. Instead of focusing on the universal sound of her consciousness, she became increasingly distracted and frustrated -- at one point she actually had to leave our session. When she had cooled off, she re-joined us for namasté, but soon grimaced like she was crushing walnuts between her hands. As we finished, she announced that she was through and told us it was going to be a long time before she thought about trying yoga again. We told her we thought that would probably be a good idea. Not everyone finds their inner-yogi.
Namastè.
RT
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