A Reluctant Yogi

I almost turned around and walked out when I realized that my regular yoga teacher Leyla was on vacation and we had a sub. After all, I had already biked 20 miles today, so I really didn’t need the exercise. But after making the effort to get there, I decided to stay for the 90-minute class.

I thoroughly understand that Leyla can’t be there 52 weeks a year, but this sub was the one who torqued my shoulder 5 months ago, leaving me with a problem that has never totally gone away.

Naomi is an adorable pretzel-like yoga teacher who is bubbly and enthusiastic and actually a little too talkative for my taste. She constantly walks around the room making corrections as we hold the various poses. I made up my mind to quickly tell her I was “injured” if she approached me to offer a correction.

I’m sure she cringed at many of my poses tonight, but only once did she say anything, simply telling me to put a slight bend in my knees without physically making a correction. I wondered if Leyla had advised her to let me do my own yogic thing, knowing that I had had a bad experience with Naomi when she (Leyla) was on maternity leave.

Tonight’s theme was twisting. We twisted while we lunged, twisted while we did the warrior poses, twisted in triangle pose, twisted while “threading the needle”, twisted while we sat on our sitz bones, and probably twisted in some other poses. When I couldn’t manage to create the requested pretzel, I just relaxed in child’s pose.

I made it through the class with no further injury and made my peace with Naomi. But I will be so glad when Leyla is back. I think I will be in her level 1 class forever. It’s just what I need to hang onto what little flexibility I have.