Saturday, March 31

I have lots to say about March Madness, our snow country version, but not now.


Last night two women showed up at yoga, sisters who have back-to-back birthdays, but 8 or so years apart.  They flew out from Oklahoma to help another sibling, a resident, navigate a difficult emotional time.  The one whose birthday was yesterday decided to try something she has never done before: yoga!


They almost turned back at the door but they persevered, set up their mats and forged their way through a Level I class, basic and uncomplicated, but very challenging.  After class we chatted about what it took for them to even walk through the door.  Why is it so intimidating to go to your first yoga class?  Even your first few?  Or in a new place?


My conclusion is this.  Us humans are reluctant to put ourselves in situations where we either don't know what we are doing when everyone else does, or when we think we are going to be asked to do things that make us physically uncomfortable.  Or both.  But here is the clincher: the reluctance level is upped when we are in an intimate setting.  It's not like we are outside with a whole host of distractions, we are sitting a few inches away from someone else who we think has been doing yoga for decades longer than ourselves.


My first yoga class was with Melanie Law at the old Deva Yoga space in town.  Erica Clum kept telling me about it, showing me the bruised on the backs of her arms, the result of trying to balance on her triceps.  She also told me that yoga makes your muscles longer. I thought, wow, I want long muscles, but I also want to balance on my arms!


She took me to a class and I was super nervous, thinking that I would be the only one there that didn't know what she was doing.  But I also remember feeling that unlike, say, an aerobics class, with yoga there was something deeper to "get", and that my noviceness was more novice-y than being in an aerobics class.  But I went, I made her sit beside me and I muddled my way through, banking on some natural athleticism and strength of mind to get through the practice.  I was kind of hooked from that point on.


But back to the Oklahoma ladies.  They sat in the back of the class, and fumbled and giggled and fell out of poses, but they did it.  They did their first yoga class and I think they had fun.  They got a sense for how challenging the poses are and how not serious any of it is, and how interesting it is to move your body in ways you didn't know it could move, and to how cool it is to feel your body and parts of your body that you maybe have never felt, and how calming it is to just enjoy the sensation of your breath entering and exiting your body, and how mystifying it is to start the class with an inharmonic "aim" and to end it with 3 harmonic "aims", all because we spend 75 minutes moving and breathing together as a group.


It does not matter if you can touch your toes or not.  We have ways to work around that.  It does not matter if you think you have the shortest hamstrings ever.  We can work with that.  What matters is stepping out of your comfort zone and trying something that, deep down, you suspect will enhance every aspect of your life.


Today is Saturday and we will ski all day.  We are predicted to have record highs in the upper 60's!!!  My work week was nice, slowing down with regular weekly duties and delving into seasonal projects we don't have time for until off-season.


After class Thursday we came home and I made Carmola Granola, Party Nuts and put the remaining groceries away from our Wednesday evening Montrose run.  Mangos for 99 cents each, with some lime squeezed on them this morning, just like Hawaii mornings.


Oh, and for those of you that live here and like birds, we finally saw what birds roost in the collection of nests in the cottonwoods just past the Ridgway Reservoir entrance on the right: blue herons!  I thought they were osprey nests because I had read they tend to nest together, but we saw 8-10 herons, some 2 in a nest, making eggs, laying eggs, warming eggs.


One more week for the ski area to remain open, if it can.  The snow conditions are deteriorating by the hour, but snow that is there is skiing great.