Yoga

Last January my husband was encouraged by a friend to join a yoga class at the gym where we exercise. I went along out of curiosity and was amazed to find that it was a class of all men. Since then the class has balanced out with an equal number of men and women but I felt like a pioneer the first few classes until some other women joined us.

When I first started doing yoga I was in awe of the instructor who seemed to float easily from one pose to another while describing to us where and how to place our various body parts. I put my mat in the far back corner of the room where I ungracefully stumbled, creaked, groaned, struggled and gasped to place my body parts in the near-impossible positions that she was describing. The instructor was infinitely patient in helping me learn how to adapt my body to the moves.

Today in class I realized with surprise that I, too, was beginning to move smoothly through the positions with some semblance of grace and ease. I relaxed and enjoyed the class immensely!

Who says ya can't teach old dogs new tricks?? Or yoga poses??

THANKFUL THURSDAY

Today I am thankful for my Yoga class. Although being graceful has never been my greatest talent, I have always been relatively flexible and limber--we called it being "double-jointed" when I was young. In the past ten years or so I have exercised a lot because I was having multiple hip problems which finally culminated in two hip replacements. At first I was led to believe that strengthening my "core" or hip girdle area would make the hip pain go away, so I began a frenzy of exercise programs, work with personal trainers, water therapy, and so on. However, I shied away from Yoga and Pilates because I was fearful that I just could not do those things. Unfortunately, I just never checked them out.

Despite my frenzy of exercise programs, I ended up with two hip replacements. After my second hip replacement my wonderful physical therapist sent me to a place called "Core Power" for further strengthening. It was run by a physical therapist and her husband. Their specialty was a combination of Yoga and Pilates to strengthen the core muscles. I exercised with them for a delightful year of learning how to strengthen muscles to help my aging body work better without wearing out my joints. Now, this summer, I am taking a Yoga class and just loving it. The instructor started out with some simple moves that I was able to do--perhaps not so gracefully, but at least I can achieve the poses and hold them now. The last couple of weeks she has "ramped up" (her words, not mine) the routines and I have struggled to copy her graceful poses. There have been several times when I thought I would collapse due to exhaustion, but I managed to hang in there. My competitive spirit kicks in and I look around thinking, "If they can do it, so can I--huff, huff, puff, puff, breathe, breathe!"

And, so today I am thankful for my Yoga class. And I am even more thankful that my husband is doing it with me! In fact, the class is almost all male--I, as a female, am a minority in the class. That really surprised me when I joined the class, but it made it a good class for my husband to join also and I am thankful that he is there, paying attention to his own strength and flexibility.