Yoga schmoga

Yoga class tonight was great. I learned three new poses. This is what happens when you skip two classes; you come back and get to learn a whole bunch of poses all at once. (So much more bang for the time spent in bare feet on a hardwood floor when it’s STILL snowing outside! This girl does not do bare feet until May.*)

I am a yoga newbie, by the way. I know about 12 poses, and I suck at most of them. I particularly suck at all of the supine “relaxation” poses. I may be the worst corpse poser in all of yoga’s lengthy history. My brain, she does not shut off, unless perchance she is hit by a blunt object. What happens when I get in these supine poses and they tell us all to breathe and turn the lights off and cover us in blankets and put little sweet-smelling pillows over our eyes (I know, best exercise class ever!) is that I either a) fall asleep and start dreaming, or b) let all that fabulous deep-breathing oxygen work its way into my brain and I come up with brilliant ideas and then my mind starts whirring.

I rationalize that the yoga gods would be cool with this. I am, um, opening myself up to the universe, and getting in touch with my creative core, and Namaste, shanti, shanti, etc. right?

Something like that. I’m also pretty bad with the philosophy part of yoga. But, lest you think I’m a complete screw up, my downward facing dog totally rocks.

So today, we learned Supta Baddha Konasana, which looks like the picture, although we didn’t use the pilows at the side, but wrapped blankets around our feet for support (I’m in favor of this, given the snow and the bare feet). And there I am, lying in a very vulnerable position, eyes closed, all open to the universe and whatnot, and I begin thinking about a problem I’ve been having with my work. It’s been frustrating me a lot lately.

You know, it occurs to me that I don’t often talk about that on my blog. I rarely come on here and say, “I had such a rotten writing day today. Anyone want to lend me a drill so I can make a hole in my head and force the words out one by frickin’ one?” But I do have those days. Weeks. Months. But mostly, I consider myself so incredibly lucky to be able to do what I do for a living that I don’t want to complain. Or more that I don’t want to complain in Googleable print that someone can then throw in my face later when I talk about how much I love my job. Because I do love it. Even when it’s hard and headache-making.

So yes, FYI, writing sometimes really sucks and I get very frustrated and I want to cry and moan and throw my computer at something hard so as to create a satisfying crashing sound. Nothing is perfect. But the worst writing day is still better than any day I ever spent answering phones at the insurance company. I can’t imagine the blog I would have had had I known of blogs when I worked at that place.**

But I digress. Today was not a bad writing day. I had yoga. But I have been frustrated with a particular facet of my work recently and most of my buddies have heard me whinging about it. (Hi, buddies!) Earlier this week I was whinging to my agent. (Hi, agent!) And she told me that I needed to step back a bit, away from all the advice I was getting from buddies and agents and go with my gut.

So it was a good thing we were doing abdomens at yoga class today, as I became intimately acquainted with my gut. So I spent and hour and a half working my gut off, and then I got in that Supta Somethin’ Somethin’ pose–which, as you can see from the picture, is very gut-centric–and inner and outer spiraled and breathed in the sweet-smell from the eye pillows and started being a very bad supine poser because I was thinkingthinkingthinking…

And I think I know what I need to do.

Which is a very relaxing thought, indeed. In an exciting, “let’s get to it” kind of way.

See? I’m so bad at relaxing.

I’ll update later with this week’s book giveaway winners.

THIS WEEK’S WINNER IS:

JULIE LETO

And I think she’s out of town.

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* Now we all get to hear Robin wax poetic about the joys of hot-room yoga.
** Which was many years ago, and I have had several perfectly lovely day jobs since then, very few of which have ever made me cry, let alone cry daily. I made a rule after working there that never again would I do something evil for employment. Working there felt like being a henchman in a Bond film. Like a Stormtrooper on the Death Star.