Slow yoga

I tried a yoga lesson this week, time to get a bit of flexibility back with all the hauling around of big bambino. A nice morning lesson, I had high hopes. But it was very slow, with lots of talking (of course) about the third eye and chakras and the point of strength 5cm below the belly button and 5cm inwards. Some rotation of wrists and ankles and one downward dog. Perhaps your evening class is more dynamic, I suggest. Depends what you mean by dynamic. Oops, she has taken offence, despite the fact that I complimented her on the lovely lesson first. Well, more toning. ‘Ahh, toning,’ she sniffs, ‘if it’s toning you want, go to a gym. The effetto tonificante of yoga is just a result of holding the positions.’ I know, I say patiently, the asanas … do you do any of these in your evning lesson? The triangle, the warrier, fish, bridge etc? ‘I was thinking of introducing them next month,’ she says, reciting their Sanskrit terms piously. Ahhhh, pazienza. The problem here is, when people get a ‘titolo’, they think they are way above everyone else and that the rest of us are ignorant. Two of my best friends are yoga teachers so i do know something ... It’s just that I had a baby four months ago, I say, and I wanted to regain some flexibility, I feel like an old woman, I joke. But motherhood is the most beautiful, energy-giving moment of one’s life, she says. SIGH. I sense a lecture coming. As if I didn’t know that. As if I am not loving every moment of bambino’s four months and three weeks. But he was 10pounds and stretched my whole pelvic area, not to mention his now 20pounds hanging off my shoulders etc. He’s almost double the expected weight for his age. I do yoga every day at home, and am convinced the yoga I did throughout my pregnancy enabled me to birth my big baby so beautifully and without any problems in water – and I managed to turn him, with his occiput posterior (head into back instead of stomach during labour) presentation by sitting on a pilates ball for 6 hours. But I though I might be able to learn something new at this course – plus it would be a little hour of me time, because it is not easy to get the downward dogs flowing when bambino is hollering because his little gums hurt, or he’s hungry or he wants me to play. But no. I try a last shot – well, what time is your evening class and how long does it last? Hoping for some final elucidation. ‘I don’t wear a watch,’ she smiles, superior. Oh God, a patronizing yogie master. Actually neither do I, but I don’t tell her that. I need to know to make arrangements for my baby I manage to smile, thinking, there is no way I want to see her again. And all this (an hour of stretching fingers and toes, thanks)for 10€ when the shop had assured me the trial was free. As if we were in Dublin.