Life is just so stressful. My 401(k) and IRA are DOA; my worst suspicions about corporate leaders have been realized -- they can't even cheat successfully; I've been on high alert so long I answer my phone with an oven mitt; and the Regatta is about to start.
But I know how to relax: yoga.
Yoga is so common now it's not even special, like having an OBX sticker on your car. (I'd like to buy an oval sticker that says "OB a little more original.") When I was a kid, only leotard-wearing Lola Granola types with long, straight hair and bodies skinny from vegetarian/-macrobiotic diets did yoga. Now everybody does it, including soccer moms, hairy guys and pudgy newspaper columnists.
Yoga is a good way to achieve relaxation and serenity, but you do that only after you've spent an hour or so twisting yourself into unlikely knots and supporting your entire body weight on a wrist or the edge of a foot until you fear for your structural integrity.
The few people left in America who aren't doing yoga probably think it's just lying around on the floor, breathing. People who walk by the windows when my class is in its final minutes see us, in fact, just lying around on the floor, breathing. They don't realize that we are doing that because we are no longer able to move.
Yoga can be gentle stretching. It can be deep breathing. It's always noncompetitive and respectful of the limitations of each individual's body. But it can also be an intense struggle to maintain balance while holding your body in strangely folded positions while muscles wobble and sweat begins to soak through your loose, comfortable clothing.
Yoga instructors are the best advertisement for why you should bother to do this to yourself. I have seen other kinds of fitness instructors with pot bellies or flabby this or that, and it always makes me wonder: If you do this all the time and you look like that, what's the point?
But I have never seen a yoga instructor who was anything but a tight, lithe, wiry little person with sculpted muscles, no visible body fat -- and a calm, genuine smile. I don't know how long you have to practice before you get your spine replaced by a rubber hose, but that must be part of the process.
Unlike most fitness instructors, they do not play deafening music and shout maniacally at you. The music can get a little weird, but at least it's kept fairly soft. The instructors speak in low, sometimes singsong cadences designed to reassure you that putting your knees on your elbows and balancing your whole body on your hands is perfectly natural.
I will never have the yoga body, because the lifestyle that produces and maintains it does not include pepperoni pizza. But I still like yoga, because, unlike almost any other kind of exercise I have done, it allows me to see dramatic progress. Things I can't begin to do one week, I succeed at a week or two later after something that was in the way has been dislocated.
Some of the poses are really very challenging. One of my least favorites is the "bow" pose. It's simple enough to explain: Lie face-down on the floor and grab your ankles. (Don't really. Just imagine it. I don't know what kind of health insurance you have.) Now pull all four limbs up off the floor so you're balancing on your belly. Also, you have to keep breathing, which will make you rock a bit.
I much prefer the "plow": You lie on your back and then fold your legs up over your head until your toes touch the floor behind your head. I've pretty much got that one down, though I'll tell you, it's hard to breathe with the weight of your hips on your windpipe.
You just have to trust the instructor, no matter how outrageous her directions may seem.
"Rest in 'plow' pose. Inhale and exhale." (I'm working on it.)
"If you're comfortable here, --"
("Comfortable" is probably too strong a word ...)
"Just stay like this. But if you want to challenge yourself, --" (I'm listening.)
"Reach your arms up over your head, rest them on the floor and grasp your toes."
(Wow. Well, OK, ... wow! I did it! I can't see my toes, but I found them!)
"To deepen the stretch, if you wish to, --"
(I can't wait to hear what's next. I'm face to face with my knees.)
"Bend your knees, still holding onto your toes, and bring your knees to the floor beside your ears."
(WHAT?? Who am I? Gumby?)
Hey, this is the 21st century. Relaxation is something you have to work at.
Samantha Bennett can be reached at sbennett@post-gazette.com.
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