internet yoga

Have I mentioned lately how much I am over getting old? I mean in some respects it's nice to have an excuse to want to go to bed at 10:00 and wear sensible shoes and deliberately seek out a high fiber diet and do all the other things I've been doing for the better part of a decade while my friends mocked me while eating white bread at midnight wearing stilettos. But for the most part, I'm over it. I'm tired of having to subsist on a mean and meager 2000 calories a day to keep from exploding like the Hindenburg. I'm tired of hoisting increasingly sagging boobs into increasingly strained undergarments. And I'm tired of the constant stream of minor injuries that have been interfering with my two favorite activities: running and sleeping. Last month it was my knee, likely the result of old shoes. That said, it still took me three solid weeks to recover from that one--three weeks after I replaced my running shoes. This week it's been my back/hip, which has really turned me into a cranky old lady. Seriously, the only silver lining would be to end up with a walker that I could shake while I yelled at those damn kids. What I did to my back is beyond me, since I have yet to break a six mile long run building up from the last injury--and very seldom do I do more three or four. But it wakes me up at night and in fact seems extra aggravated by our bed.

To alleviate some of strain on my old and battered body I've been seeking out alternative ways of keeping active (I mean as active as a lazy, slightly agoraphobic old person with few friends, an unreliable car, and no job can truly be). And this is how I've stumbled upon internet yoga. I've never been in love with yoga. I'm neither strong nor flexible enough for it to be truly relaxing (most of what I think when I'm supposed to be concentrating on my breath is fuck, fuck, fuckity ouch!) and I find nothing natural or centering about "downward dog." Running is intuitive and simple--one simply goes until one can go no more; yoga is messy and requires turning oneself into a human curly fry (and to some degree requires a level of smugness about one's wholeness with the universe that I just can't quite pull off.) But I do enjoy this (and only this) video. I find the woman's voice soothing and she makes the whole process nice and repetitive (not unlike running) so that even if I mess up the first time, I'm sure to catch it on the third or fourth. She also breaks all the poses down into individual components so that I don't have to be even twistier to keep one eye on the TV while the teacher goes about her business "flowing" through the poses like I know what the hell she's talking about. In short, it's been nice to stretch a bit. My favorites are the cat and the tree, but I also enjoy the pigeon and the extended child pose. Before you know it, I'll have ditched the internet to join forces with the legions of old ladies who fill up the library parking spaces descending upon the Saturday morning classes. Or maybe I'll just start speed dialing the police to complain about my neighbors. Namaste.