The Yoga Cure: Alive and well in Artland

I couldn't do this one yesterday....but soon!  (Wiki Commons)

Yesterday, I did something I haven't done in about six years, and it made an enormous difference.

I took a yoga class.

I've never been a yoga nut; I really haven't been a nut for anything, not even my beloved horse. But I did enjoy yoga when I got the chance all my life. When I was young (that is to say, under 60), I didn't need to practice it often because I was strong, healthy and flexible and I never had a problem with a pose.

That was then, this is now.

I actually could not perform the one-legged poses; I had suspected my balance was off, but that tested it.

I actually fell over in one close-to-the-floor tripod pose.

The instructor fell out of a pose shortly thereafter. No, she didn't. Yes, she did. This is England, where people are polite, doubtless the source of the hostess drinking from the finger bowl when an ignorant guest does so that the guest won't feel embarrassed. Just so, the instructor fell out of a pose. I actually wanted to tell her, "Hey, you didn't have to do that. I'm a former Yank, I can deal." But I didn't. Why should I rain on her civility parade?

Enlightenment through very gentle movement

But I learned something. By the end of the class, I realized that my faintly perceived balance issues were actually more like total lack of muscle tone. And of course, after having ridden horses, hard, for 20 years before just hanging it up eight years ago and doing zilch for exercise, the descent in strength was long and hard.

Fortunately, I am healthy. Despite my evening cocktail, which I regard as natural anyway, I eat no crap. I breathe as little crap as I can, which is probably very little indeed in semi-rural Cornwall. I work (sometimes) at staying mentally and emotionally healthy...although I admit that the go-round with the IRS 2.5 years ago about pushed me off the rails. Still, even that had a good effect; I renounced my US citizenship to rid myself of those wankers once and for all, and I'd wanted not to be an American for a long, long time.

So back to yoga and art.

Yoga Nazis

Before I left Upper East Tennessee/Southwest Virginia for the last time, I had started going to a  yoga class at the Johnson City, TN, community center. It was very inexpensive, like about 3 bucks, but the instructor was magical. I loathed the Salute to the Sun, still do, but  the rest was wonderful and her closing meditation alone was worth the price of admission. I have missed it since 1997.

I tried a yoga class  in Westminster, MD, about 6 years ago, realizing lack of riding was wrecking my muscles. But I was doing a lot of gardening, and frankly, it was better than the class. Then I tried one in Frederick, MD, that almost killed me. It was, I learned yesterday, probably Bikram yoga, which is like eastern calisthenics in a very, very warm room. I did that only once. And gave thanks that I lived through it.

And then the years rolled by. When I lived in the flat in Tavistock, I walked everywhere. Now, from my house on a windy road with lots of traffic in suburban Cornwall? Not so much, proving I do value my life. Good excuse, though, to become a slug.

Good yoga transcends place and time

Yesterday, at Sadhana Yoga Studio in Tavistock, owner/instructor Kathryn Blackie got me back to reality and yoga. She is kind. She is competent. She is knowledgeable. She does a good closing meditation. I actually signed up for two months of classes, something I have never done, ever.

Some parts of me, despite not being able to stretch ANY pose to the max, were sore, but a good sore.
The pain that had crept back into my knees after I tinkered (wildly) with the paleo diet that had cured them last summer disappeared. Last night, I didn't get the excruciating pain in my hips that had been with me most nights for a couple of months now.

In short, a single, gentle yoga class, in which I failed to do any pose to the max, cured a lot of what ailed me.

It also cured my attitude. I'd been snapping at Simon for weeks, for nothing. I thought it was the various promotional problems with my artwork and my writing making me crabby. Apparently not. Apparently it was disorder in my system. I had no need to snap at the poor man yesterday. So I didn't, and he was so happy, back to the charming, funny Simon I met and married.

I had been fretting for weeks about things that are very probably seven years away. I stopped fretting.

Onward and upward

I wrote a diatribe just for fun. (I love exercising those rhetoric muscles.) I finished a small painting. I cooked a really swell Chinese dinner-twice-cooked pork, spicy eggplant and cold peanut noodles. I ate fruit for dessert, not chocolate. (Simon was less thrilled with that, as he seemed to feel compelled to eat canned peaches with me. Yes, canned peaches. A childhood fave that I happened to have on hand. Plus I believe what a friend from Goa once told me; it is not good to eat raw fruit after dinner.)

So what's this got to do with art? Everything. One cannot properly produce artistic works if one is hurting and listless and lethargic and thinks there might be something wrong...which doctors probably could not pin down, but would have a good time trying to do and probably wreck the rest of one's life in the process.  I admit, I was actually thinking of visiting a doctor. Me. Visiting a doctor. Without having been tossed off a horse and carted off against my will. That's how bad it had gotten.

I'm going to do a few poses later today. I'm going to do a few tomorrow. I'm going to do a few every day, and lots of them on Tuesday mornings from 10 am to 11.30 am.  Why not? The benefits are enormous. They include:

• Less pain, heading toward none.
• Regaining strength and balance.
• Meeting some nice people.
• Being less crabby.
• Being more peaceful.
• Getting more writing and art done.

OK. Yes, increased work appears on my list. But you knew that. I might be one of a small group of Type A introverts in the universe. But there it is. And I make no apologies for it.