A Year of Yoga
Last July, I started yoga classes with the gorgeous and fabulous goddess Araceli. On Wednesdays and Fridays at 3:30 pm, I dragged myself out of the house and hauled my lazy ass to attend her 4:00 pm yoga class. At first, it was hard to get myself there. Often lacking motivation, I forced myself to go to class. My frugal heart also hated to waste the money I had prepaid for a month of classes. I set alarms on my phone to remind me there was a yoga class scheduled in half an hour. This gave me time to mentally prepare, change into my yoga pants, fill my water bottle, and check that the house keys were in my bag. Whether I felt motivated or not I took myself to yoga regardless of rain or shine. The days I least wanted to go to class were the days I most needed to go.
As the weeks and months went by, I could feel my body changing and getting stronger. That initial lack of motivation vanished. I embraced the stretching and worked on my muscles. I became much more flexible. Then, I began designing my life around my yoga classes. Appointments were arranged by circumnavigating those two hours from 3:30—5:30 pm on Wednesdays and Fridays. I am always busy during those hours on those days, regardless of what is happening.
On yoga days, I refuse to travel to Esmeraldas in case the bus is late and I miss a class. Even while opening my business for various food events (like this weekend’s Ice Cream Sundae Sunday), I inform customers I’ll be closed during my yoga class. It might seem crazy, but this part of my self-care routine has become essential to my life. I need to spend at least an hour each day listening to my body click and clunk and creak and crunch through its stretches. This sounds rough but if I don’t do it, my joints and limbs will stiffen and get even clunkier.
A few months ago, Araceli added a fantastic Sunday Yin Yoga class. Now, three times a week, I’m blocking out the world and going to yoga class. It’s as vital as breathing. If I miss a class, I feel terrible both physically and emotionally and I try to make it up at home with the prerecorded yoga classes Araceli made for previous homework sessions. Every day, I do something at home that will help my body heal. Overall, I feel stronger, fitter, calmer, and more focused.
This month, I wanted to celebrate a year of yoga and honor Araceli for everything she has done throughout the year. Specifically, she custom-built a yoga routine adapted to my body and its special physical limitations, and she has helped me overcome many of those problems, one by one. Some of them, we are still working on… Like that dicky knee from last year. It’s slowly getting better and the leg is becoming more flexible.
During yoga classes, Araceli will right my body if it’s positioned incorrectly and demonstrate alternative poses for the same muscle stretch to protect my knees. She constantly challenges my flexibility and shows me that I can go one inch further if I breathe correctly. She also acknowledges the effort I make to feel better and that’s a great motivator.
Over two months, I gradually sculpted the pictured yoga figure using a wire form to begin and clay to mold the shape. Bit by bit, as each part was formed and shaped and dried, it all came together. The top part holds a candle. I also made some brownies and took them to our anniversary class to celebrate, saving them for after our hour of stretches and meditation. Everyone present at that class loved the brownies.
Araceli was delighted with the yoga candle holder. She could not have been more surprised. Each time Araceli had come to my house during those two months, I’d rush to hide the unfinished figure somewhere before she came upstairs. Before the anniversary class, she’d never seen it. It gave me great joy to present her with something special I had crafted with my hands and heart, a gift created from a place of gratitude. The gifts she bestows on me with her spectacular yoga classes are unequaled and will remain an essential part of my daily life. After one year of yoga, you could now say I’m fully hooked and happy about it...