Got Back My Namaste

Prenatal Yoga is better now with my regular teacher, and the stretches and breathing were just wonderful and relaxing. I was able to remain in my body and to concentrate this time, and to acheive some measure of yogic calm to take away with me. I talked to my teacher, Julia, for a long time afterward, and shared my experience of my first class. It definitely was too much. I've heard other students say, even those that are triathalon-athelete types, that pregnancy can knock the breath right out of you. Yoga is a beautiful way to get back in touch w/ your health and the baby physically/psychically and to take care of all the little aches and pains that come with the territory. Julia has a particularly soothing and beautiful voice, and does a lovely job of carrying me through the art of yoga. I do still miss my original teacher and mentor, Barbara, whose classes were discontinued. Like me, she is a plus size woman and made yoga really possible for me. I feel inspired to pick up yoga again at home. Last time I tried Tyler giggled at me a lot. Let's see what he does now!

Had a long chat w/ friends Agatha and (also-hubby) Ben about yoga and the different takes on it. Yoga has a spiritual side to it, connected to chakras, that sort of thing. I have a book called Mindfulness Yoga about replacing that with Buddhism, and that is where I am at, personally. A lot of the mysticism behind yoga to me is pure poetry, and I love it, but as active imagery and poetry. And a lot of the sanskrit words have very poetic meanings. I sing the Om Shanti Shanti at the end of class and it's meaning of the one universal sound, om, together with a wish for peace, shanti, spreading in three chants from the personal to the present to the world, is certainly something I can get behind. If I open my heart chakra, I consider the act one of practicing the precept of Buddhist compassion, and work toward Lovingkindness toward others. I can meditate and imagine the "energy" of the living Earth rising up through me through my breaths, and it works for me, is cleansing even, without needing it to be real psychic energy of the spiritual kind. When you straighten your spine like a string of pearls lifting toward the heavens, isn't that nice imagery? When we are practicing pranayamas (yoga breathing) there is a mystic point between the intake and release of the breath. It is not "holding" the breath but a kind of relaxed pause. I love this pause. One teacher described it as the darkness after the moon sets and before the sun rises. Another described it as a little death, touching that mystic point of nothingness, the veil between the worlds. Tell me that isn't poetry!!!

To get back to the subject of prenatal (this is a pregnancy blog after all): Back when I was preggers w/ Tyler, we had a guided meditation in yoga class in which we each imagined our babies in a golden balloon of light beginning around the uterus but which growed until it enveloped us both, and then imagined lifing the baby into my arms and sending him warmth and love and nurturing, finally shrinking the balloon until we gently returned to the uterus with our hands on our bellies. It was at this moment that Tyler gave me a serious series of excited kicks. It's a moment I won't ever forget. He was always "present" in yoga.