Dog Will Have His Day

I don't make a good down-facing dog, though I finally managed to get child even if happy baby is not so wonderful. Yoga teachers tell you not to judge yourself -- a horror to judge others! But can we help it? I don't know how they pull that off in India, never been and never had an Indian yoga teacher. I know, anecdotally, that Tibetan monks can pull off that no-self-judgment thing, but I'm a long way from such enlightenment.

I've been taking yoga classes for years -- I've been lifting weights for decades but I'm still flabby, though there I go judging myself again. Never managed to get past pre-beginner level. And even child's pose, which is supposed to be relaxing, it took me years to relax into it. I considered it a great accomplishment.

Yoga's good for you. So is yogurt, maybe all things that begin with y, which means that in my native Cuba, where there was such a craze for naming children with names beginning with y that an internationally acclaimed blog is called Generation Y, there must be a lot of people who are good for you. Though I'm not so sure.

And like yogurt yoga is very popular in the US, appealing to the same mindset and demographic. I consume lots of yogurt. And sometimes I do pre-beginner yoga. It's good for the body. It's good for the nervous system -- I should know, for mine always needs serious help. Good for the soul? Like I said, a long way from enlightenment.

It's a good thing that yoga is so popular, besides boosting sales of classes, yoga mats, yoga pants and pedicures -- a lady told me she spent so much time in yoga classes staring at her toes that she made sure they looked presentable. Anything that chills is a good thing, and I am driven to include refrigerators and airconditioners in spite of their not so good carbon footprint because I hail from the tropics.

I haven't been to yoga classes for a long time. But I'm ready to once again rest like a child, struggle to get down like a dog and wiggle my toes at the heavens like a happy baby.