“Sometimes my yoga is just a walk on the beach or reading a
good book.” I distinctly remember Annie
Carpenter uttering this sentence during my teacher training at Yoga Works in
2003. The words struck a chord in that
moment, but I don’t think I fully understood what she meant until just
recently. It was almost as if my mind
identified it as advice that I would later need desperately.
After over a decade
of teaching yoga, I have to admit that my own yoga practice doesn’t always feel
as good as it used to, either mentally or physically. Don’t get me wrong~ I still love how strong
and loosey-goosey I feel when I practice, and it still offers me the calm and
focus I need to get through my day as a kind, patient, and productive
person. And, I love my students. The problem is that, even after all of these
years, I still find it challenging to turn off my “teacher brain” and enjoy the
practice for what it is. I find myself
thinking, “Hey, I liked that sequence I just came up with, so maybe I’ll teach
that tomorrow,” and such. I don’t seem
to have any boundaries between practicing for myself and practicing for my
students.
Enter Fit On. The
spin place? Yes. I know—it’s an unlikely pair, spinning and
me. Our relationship, in fact, began
shakily many years ago at my old gym. I
took two classes. During the first one,
the instructor screamed at me to add
more tension to my bike. My wimpy little
quadriceps screamed right back, “Noooooooooo!!!” The second class would have been a brilliant
SNL sketch. The bike seats back then
were really uncomfortable (or maybe my butt was just bonier?), so a lot of
folks wore those silly bike shorts with the padded crotches. I didn’t have any, so I took a cue from that
old Quilted Northern commercial and padded my underpants with a huge wad of
toilet paper. (A quick apology to my
hubby here, who thinks I should never admit this story publicly.) As I looked down 15 minutes into class, the
strobe light in the dimly lit spinning room illuminated the bright white “snow”
that was falling out of my shorts and landing gracefully all over the red carpet
surrounding my bike. What’s any
self-respecting girl to do? I
oh-so-maturely fled the scene and never returned to spin class, of course!
So, last year, while complaining to a friend that I missed
that “high” I used to get from running, you can imagine my reaction to her
solution, “You’ve got to try Fit On!!”
Sure, friend, I’ll get right on that.
Just as soon as pigs fly.
Luckily, this particular friend has two middle names: persistence and sales. I took a class. And I LOVED it. The teacher was happy. The other students were woot-wooting. The music was loud and thumping and so
wonderfully cheesy. I pedaled at my own
pace, with very little tension on my wheel that first day (ha! so there!). I soon realized that spinning had become my
Yoga~ or at least the perfect complement to it.
I still need my quiet time, and my breathing and stretching and
meditation. But when I get on that bike,
I am completely absorbed in the moment, soaking up all of the positive energy
in the room, pedaling away from all of my burdens, and loving the music. Those 50 minutes are completely my own, and
teacher brain, and wife brain, and friend brain will just have to wait.
There is a phrase painted on the wall at the Fit On studio:
“The Power of Shared Energy”. When I
first noticed it, I had to smile. Over a
decade ago, my yoga practice really began to blossom when I attended Seane
Corn’s packed Sunday morning classes at Yoga Works on Main Street. The shared energy in that room was electric,
and supportive, and it made me feel like I was part of something larger than that
space. I get a little taste of that
again~ a feeling I have really missed~ when I get on that spin bike, and no one
could be more surprised about that than me.
So, thank you, Fit On teachers, and Annie Carpenter, for
reminding me that my yoga practice doesn’t always
have to be about rolling out the mat and stringing together a sequence of
poses. Yoga is everywhere. Even in the most unlikely places.
