20 January, 2015

Based on a false story.


You are very relaxed. You're a river, a river of calm. Inhale, slowly. You're flowing. Very, very slowly. Breathe deeply. Feel the energy as you exhale. The energy flows with you. Are you aware? You are a river of energy. And you are overflowing. Can you feel it now? Good. That's why yoga mats are waterproof. And that's why you should never drink before yoga.
Although drunk yoga could be appealing to a big slice of the population pie, the slice that would not consider it while sober. But you'd just have to imagine something else than a river. Maybe a nice, dry cab with a driver that doesn't lie when he says he knows the address you've mumbled and won't rip you off on a prolonged detour there.

Yoga seems easy, but it is difficult and misleading. I was expecting to become a master in less than 10 minutes. For the first 2 or 3 it looked promising but eventually the only superior state I reached was a state of superior numbness followed by pain. This was a bit disappointing, as I have a very well trained body; for many years I've been following an almost daily workout routine on the keyboard and mouse. However, yoga seems to involve more muscles than those in the fingers, and my superbly fit index and middle finger couldn't compensate for the lack of exercise anywhere else in the body.
On the spiritual front it didn't go very well, either. After a while my mantras were in complete harmony with the humming of the fridge and the state of deep calm and relaxation I was expecting was consisting of five or six ideas blending quite dis-harmoniously. They covered an extended spectrum of high-level emotions such as slight hunger, things I could do to make the time go faster (I am particularly vulnerable to boredom), thinking whether I have enough clothes to postpone doing the laundry for next weekend, incipient sleepiness, trying to remember if someone borrowed the green memory-stick or I lost it and, finally, two rather conflicting ones: thirst and do I need to go to the bathroom?
I was wondering if this is what everybody else is experiencing during yoga. Because if it is, I am already a master. Unfortunately, I was not very sure. And failing to decide whether I was on the right track or not, I went for a drink to help me evaluate a better strategy to do yoga (turns out I didn't need to go to the bathroom).

To help with the mood I looked on the internet for yoga sounds but most of them consisted of infrequent bangs with a metal object in another metal object, or running water. Which I found to be very similar to what you can hear from a plumber in slow motion. And equally relaxing. And just like the average plumber visit, the average yoga soundtrack lasts between at least 3 and 8 hours.

Well, I haven't actually tried yoga, but I'm confident that if I did it would go pretty much like I imagined. I am great at planning things, especially when they don't involve any activity on my part (beside boredom, another weakness I take pride in is apprehension for manual labour). Everything else, though, is true.
Also, I don't have a yoga mat nor tight pants, which are probably not crucial but make great excuses for not doing it. However, I have a few scented candles from last Christmas which can induce a spiritual mood (or slight suffocation). I also have some marzipan left from Christmas, but I'm not sure it relates to yoga at all.

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