15 Little Minutes of Heaven

Yesterday I spent my lunch hour raking dead grass from our lawn.

Today I realized I was old and that my back hurt.

As a direct result of the latter and indirect result of the former, I was fully prepared to finish an entire episode of the “Morning Yoga Show” before cooking my dinner tonight.

I grabbed the yoga mat which Chris had bought for me last Christmas, which had been serving primarily as a dustcatcher under the coffee table since that time. I unrolled it, laid it on the ground and turned on the TV.

The program began with some easy stretches, which I was relieved to see because my only other foray into yoga had been when I’d been trying to imitate something complicated on the TV, while Chris sat on the couch and offered unsolicited opinions about how I was doing it all wrong.

I lay down on the mat and pulled one leg to my chest. Onscreen, a solemn man of uncertain racial background performed the same routine while the narrator intoned what sounded like “bed wet to chest.” After the narrator repeated this several times, I finally figured out that he was saying, “bent leg to chest,” but still couldn’t help giggling every time he said “bed wet.”

Music that was probably supposed to be soothing played over the narration, but I wasn’t feeling very soothed. For one thing, Mina and Flacko were eating, and Mina kept trying to bring her kibbles from the bowl to my yoga mat. Apparently she thought I needed a quick pick-me-up.

Meanwhile, Paco watched suspiciously from the couch. This type of behavior was so out of the ordinary for me that Paco felt he needed to keep an eye on me. For once, dinner could wait.

Next I performed a twisting sort of stretch while still on my back. Unlike the man on the screen, who appeared to be doing yoga on a deserted beach at sunset, I had limited room and kept hitting my arms on the bottom of the recliners as I waved them from side to side. And I also had a Flacko, who was now pressed up against my armpit, trying to figure out what I was doing and how he could best assist me.

Despite the mat I could still feel the hard floor beneath me, and things didn’t improve when the man grabbed his toes and pulled one of his legs straight up into the air. I started to try this, but decided a hurt back was better than no back, and gave up on holding my toes and just grabbed my knee instead. The man’s leg onscreen was a straight line, whereas mine looked like it was playing a game of Twister all by itself.

The next stretch was named Cat Stretch, and as I arched my back, Mina came over to the mat and did Dog Stretch, which looked infinitely more graceful.

Mysteriously, the man on the screen was suddenly joined by an older woman, and together the two of them started doing lunges. Paco didn’t like these, and did a workout of his own by jumping up and growling fiercely at me every time I lunged.

By the time I got to the Mountain poses, I was getting bored, and so were the dogs. Paco was lying with his head resting on his front paws on the couch, and Flacko was curled up in a blanket on the recliner by the window. Mina was on our big leather chair, surrounded by three or four toys, and barking at me incessantly. If I could do all this exercise, then I could darned well throw the chickie around for her!

“I’m almost done, Bean,” I told her. I picked up the remote and was gratified to see that I’d completed fifteen minutes of the program. That meant I was halfway–wait. The program was an HOUR long?

Fifteen minutes of yoga was plenty. Heck, I was feeling relaxed already — especially now that I’d turned off the TV.

Posted by: ssjane | May 24, 2005 | 10:20 pm
Posted in: Dogs | This Life