My Safe Place

The last few minutes of yoga class are laying on my back, towel over my eyes (the instructor can't change the lighting in the room, something she complains about every single time we do the corpse pose).

"And now, you're going to go to your safe place. Forget about whatever else you have to do. Forget about your concerns. Put them away from your mind. Your safe place. Picture it. Hold fast to that idea."

And I think back, and I grab hold of images of my grandparents' summer house. A tiny two bedroom cabin set on the barest imaginings of a peninsula; one good summer storm away from being an island. The path from the dock is no wider than two feet; a few bridges that cross what might actually not be a damp spot in the trail, but merely a very aggressive bush that holds one side of the land to the other.

I can see the docks. The front deck. The tuffets in the back of the house. (Did you ever wonder what Miss Muffet was sitting on? I don't. I've seen them... they're round domes of moss, almost perfectly round, like a seat cushion. You can pick them up, they're dirt on the bottom, and move them somewhere else, and they'll just continue to do their thing...)

And yet, I'm seeing everything from a bird's eye view. A perspective I've never actually seen these buildings, structures, trees. I don't see any people, although I was never there when there was less than four people in residence, and usually there were more. I've never seen the house from the top, nor peered down at the back yard from the roof.

I can't seem to picture myself there. Not in a deck chair, or lounging on the deck, or swimming in the back bay, or walking in the shallows over to the Point.

It's strange.

But I'm not in my safe place at all.

No one is.

Slack? Not Me!

I've been "on vacation" for the last few days. What started as a reunion party for my college's science fiction club has become a full-on yearly summer party. Starting some time around the 4th of July and running full force until about the 12th, it's nothing but people, drinking, food, visitors, food, drinking, reminiscing, getting to tell the same old stories to new people... and hey, did I mention the food?

However, I've been pretty good with the food. Well, except for yesterday... I don't think I ate MUCH yesterday, but what I did eat was almost entirely chips. And salsa. But since I didn't eat the whole bag of chips, I think it was good. Well, not good, but not totally throwing myself down the stairs. When I'm chasing the last few tomatoes around the bottom of the salsa jar with a Popsicle stick, I might need some help.

And I've been working out... not at the gym, but I did walk a LOT, and did some running around in the park.

Despite that, my weight's up a bit. Probably all the salt.

Went to Yoga again today. Oh, I love it! My instructor was very impressed with me. Today's class structure was Abs, butt, and balance.

"Are you sure you're a novice?" she asked me after class. "You had your foot way up there during tree. And your balancing tiger? that was excellent. That's a really hard pose!"

Seriously, I love the gym, I've been enjoying my classes and the workouts... but if I had to pick why I'm staying at the gym, it's yoga class. I was sweating like crazy, but I feel soooooo good afterward.

Yo(ga)!

So, I took my first Yoga class yesterday.

Wow.

I just can't say that enough. Wow.

I've done a bit of yoga before, mostly in front of the TV. There's a bit of yoga poses on the Wii Fit and I have a 15 minute Yoga workout on one of my DVDs, but there's a huge difference between Wii Fit and an actual instructor. (First of all, while I love my wii, the "trainer" is annoying - I have an overworked A button thumb from hitting the "skip whatever you're saying" button - and the background is the most cheerless gym in the world.) Not that the decor in the Onelife is anything to write home about, unless you're into weird color scheme letters.

The class is pretty small. I was the only new person, and there were six of us total. The instructor, Melissa, was a tiny little woman. She came in and asked if there was anything we particularly wanted to work on; to which I responded that I didn't know, since I was new to the class.

So she took us through an entire body-stretching routine, to kind of see where my flexibility was and what poses I would need work with. Melissa is, of course, a Bendy Wendy, but I didn't feel particularly out of place. I was about in the small-to-middle side of the class. (One of these days, I'm going to STOP playing Fattest Girl in the Room. Check back with me in 2020.)

I don't really remember the names of any of the poses, except cat-cow and downward dog, both of which I've done before. But the stretches felt really good - a little tight through the backs of my legs and calves - but good. And one of the things we did - thumb against the mirror, arm straight, bending away from the arm? - fixed a weird pull I've had in my shoulder for about a week now. It was *really* nice to be able to sleep last night without waking up because my shoulder was hurting.

At the end of class, Melissa and I talked a bit and she asked me why I'd decided to do yoga, so I told her about my car accident. (Eight years ago, I hit a woman in a conversion van who was making an illegal left hand turn across four lanes of traffic. I spent 3 months on the sofa and six months learning to walk again. Given that I was told I'd never walk again, I've come a LONG, long way. Last year, I walked 60 miles across three days in a charity event.) Still, my flexibility isn't what I'd like to be, especially in the ankle that I broke - shattered would be a better description! My ankle doesn't actually bend forward very well. Much better than it used to, but I think there's still room for improvement.

She was impressed with the flexibility I did have, especially in the hips. "I would never have guessed you as a beginner if you hadn't told me."

I will definitely be going again. I feel completely relaxed. Also, I got two vertebrae in my back to pop, which desperately needed to. So despite being mad about my weigh in last night (according to WW's scale, I maintained this week. According to my scale at home, I should have been down 2 pounds! Argh! I am TIRED of paying $12 a week to feel like a failure.) I feel pretty relaxed today.