Yoga Rules!

One of the reasons I like yoga so much is that they don't suck all the fun out of it by demanding you conform to a whole series of very specific rules all at once. It is a work in progress.

Can't touch your toes? No problem. You can bend your legs, just concentrate on keeping your spine long and straight. Use a block...or four if you want to. Can't go from downward dog to plank to lunge? Pick one and stick with it as long as you like. Something hurts? Stop doing it. Back off . Listen to your body (mine is usually telling me to go across the street to Dunkin Donuts). This activity was made for me, since I can generally only get my body to do one thing at a time.

When I was seven, my father got me a set of golf clubs and tried to teach me how to become Tiger Woods (I know. What was he thinking?).

It was three days of hiking thousands of acres, fording the raging waters of angry, storm-tossed lakes, fending off ferocious attacks by starved, blood-sucking mosquitoes the size of a mini-bus (okay, so it was a sunny summer day and a few hours at a chip and putt course, but it felt like three days of pure torture.). And there were a lot of rules.

"Hold the club like this," my father demonstrated eight thousand times. "Keep your head down, eye on the ball. Keep your arms straight and follow through on the swing. No, no. Straight arms, not bent."

Whoa. Too. Many. Things. At. One. Time. How about I just try to actually get the ball closer to the hole any way I can? Also, I may have been only seven, but even I knew that when you swing your arms from side to side, unless you are Gumby, one of your arms has to bend. And what's with the whole keeping an eye on the ball? I was only hitting it two feet at a time. How could I not keep my eye on it?

I still have the picture my mom took at the end of our golf "game". I am clutching my driver like I am playing "Whack-a-Mole" and looking like I'd rather be pretty much anywhere else while my father is weeping in the background, clutching the few tufts of hair he had left.

Years later, I got suckered into a softball game at work. It took my fellow teammates about ten seconds to realize they were actually the suckers. And so, between innings, they pulled me aside and tried to teach me the rules. They showed me how to hold the bat, how to stand, and how to run (in the unlikely event I actually managed to hit the ball.)

"Keep your elbows up, bat held high, straighten out your arm as you follow through. Keep your eye on the ball. Try not to kill yourself or anyone else with the bat."

Rules, rules, rules. Couldn't I just choose one of them to follow and maybe modify the rest? Like maybe I could hold the bat high and the pitcher could throw the ball directly at it, and then I could stroll to first base without breaking a sweat or a nail? It was hard to tell who was more relieved that I never played on the team again.

Not wanting to repeat these two experiences which scarred my delicate psyche for life, I turned to yoga.

Oh, they may tell you to pick up your leg and wrap it around your neck three times while bending over and touching your toes, but they don't actually expect you to do it.

With a simple shake of my head (well, perhaps there is a snort and a guffaw involved also), my instructor will adapt a pose that I would need some serious, heavy-duty muscle relaxants to get into and sixteen paramedics to get out of to something I am able to do, like lie down and gently roll my head from side to side. The best part is, nobody wants to do bodily harm to anyone else five minutes after starting.

Until my regular teacher was absent and Attila the Yogini substituted for her. After about five seconds, I found myself wishing yoga involved a bat or a club or even just a really sturdy stick.

"Sit on the blanket folded into a square, not a rectangle," she barked.

Okay, and the shape of the blanket matters because...?

"Sit dead center, not near the edge, and make sure the blanket is parallel to the wall which should be precisely perpendicular to your mat six inches from its base."

Or what? My chakras will collide with my chi? Is it bad karma to be seven inches from the wall, or slightly diagonal instead of at prefect right angles? I was beginning to have flashbacks to my first and only golf game.

"No, no, no," she snapped. "You're doing the pose all wrong. How do you expect to do a headstand if you don't get this pose right?"

Um. I don't. Shocking though it may be to you, I actually have zero interest in balancing on my head. Most days, I'm just happy to be able to balance on both feet.

"You must get your legs straight in downward dog and your heels on the ground, then lift one leg in the air along with the opposite hand. This will be your resting pose."

Resting pose? Exactly what have you got planned if I am resting hanging upside down while my hamstrings snap like the cables on an elevator in a horror movie right before it crashes?

This was so not what I had signed up for. Where was the acceptance of the fact that I have absolutely no talent or coordination and the understanding that I will never be able to balance on my pinkie while simultaneously forming the first three letters of the alphabet with the rest of my body?

Attila was definitely not getting the concept that I could only manage to concentrate on one body part at a time, and right now, I was concentrating on my hands wrapping around her neck.

Happily, the class ended before either one of us had a nervous breakdown, or met with a horrible accident, although it was pretty close. As I crawled to my car and drove home, the thought occurred to me that if I ever ended up with Attila as my regular instructor, I would definitely have to look around for a less challenging activity. I wondered if there is anything out there that is easier than a class where they consider breathing deeply a challenging enough activity.