post-yoga euphoria

After rising early to meet I. for our Saturday coffee (where I learned that giraffes sleep 5 minutes/day) I returned home to clean, do laundry and work on a paper - but did none of those things. Instead, I ate my weight in food, made carrot-ginger soup, ate more, then watched a very bad movie before taking a very long nap.

I woke feeling heavy, lethargic, and depressed and decided not to go to yoga - I wasn't feeling quite right. Although my guilt propelled me to get changed, I never really intended on leaving the house; that I found myself walking to the subway in the rain is a testament to the pure power of guilt as a motivator. Once there, the train was late in coming (surely a sign that I should be back home wallowing on my couch) and when it did arrive I fell asleep (surely I must be coming down with something what was I doing dragging myself to yoga?). When I exited at Bathurst I half-planned on walking right past the shala to the Spadina stop where I would get back on the subway and go home where I belonged but my feet led me into the studio and up the stairs.

I stood at the front of my mat taking a few moments to ground myself. Feet rooting to the floor, crown of my head reaching up, spine lengthening, shoulders squaring back, chest opening and rising, hips falling into place and there I was - I found myself. This was my last conscious observation. The rest of my practice was a long, graceful prayer punctuated by fleeting sensations: chest opening in upward dog; the release of my throat, head tipped back, hands reaching to the ceiling in the sun salutations; the lower half of my body grounded and assertive while the upper half moved, open and reaching in warrior II.

Of course, I was anything but graceful but I don't care. I may have looked like a moth, heavy and clumsy, but I felt like a butterfly, light and floating. When I caught my expression in store window as I wandered through the Annex after practice my face was relaxed and smiling. I felt great, a sharp contrast to how I felt just three hours earlier: heavy, lethargic and depressed. It made me think about how closely tied my body and my emotions are, how 2 days without yoga turned me into a blob, and it scared me - what would I do if I were unable to be physically active? It made me think about North America, about living in a country where the mind/body relationship is pretty much ignored, and it made me wonder what this says about our psyche as a nation?