On yoga and death

So I went to that yoga class today. Wore my sweats and a tank with a tee over it. I was a little rattier than most of the women and about on par with the men which is about where I usually am.

I can't say that I'll never go to another yoga class ever again but it won't be any time soon and I'm pretty sure I'll never go to another class at that particular establishment. No, I don't blame them for my pain but their style probably isn't a good fit for me.

Since I got finished I've felt sick to my stomach, sad, humiliated, I've got some soreness and weakness in the legs, same with the right arm, and I know exactly when I injured the left arm. It's very weak now with pain in the bicep and wrapping around from the shoulder blade to the same point in front. Oh, and I've got a headache. It's low level generalized, completely separate from the pain that's radiating from the shoulder.

Here's the thing, I'm just not very strong physically. Really I'm not. I know this and I try to improve and it's why I took the basics class instead of the open class. Fortunately the web site specified that you should get some basics under your belt before you go to the open class. Imagine what I'd feel like if I'd taken the open class first. Maybe this class wasn't very basic, the teacher didn't specify a lot of modifications if you were having trouble and he did it all with pose names so if you didn't know any of them you were stuck looking around at other people. Which, frankly, wasn't a lot of help. Also there was no breaking down of different poses, showing you how they go or walking you through getting into them, it all happened - in theory - on your breath, which if you're struggling is pretty freaking quick. This combination made it really hard for me to follow mentally, and physically I was simply not up to the challenge. Things were held far longer than I was able to stand, almost every pose was one I wasn't strong enough to hold and I had no idea how to fix it. It's making me tear up just to talk about it because I felt like such an ass and so helpless.

I'll tell you the funniest thing about it just to stop that part. By the time we got to the first downward dog of the day (first) my hands were sweating. They were sweating so badly that they kept slipping. This meant that instead of relaxing into the pose and enjoying the stretch and the relative rest of it I was scrambling to find a purchase or kneeling and wiping my hands down or trying to figure out how to make myself stop sliding. It also took my focus away from my breath since I needed to calculate whether it would be considered rude to interrupt class by slipping and breaking my nose.

I'm aware that this makes me sound a bit like I fulfilled my own prophecy. The thing is, I'm aware that I learned stuff today. I'm aware that it wasn't a total loss, that it's a good thing that I went despite the fact that I hated it. Let's review, hated. The guy did a little Q&A about meditation and then we had a 10 minute meditation at the beginning. He made me feel better about my level of ability there. It's the first time someone has explained that learning process in a way that I understand. He compared it to teaching a puppy to walk on a leash, there's constant correction but not in anger and eventually the puppy sticks with it longer and it's all about...OK, you know what I'm saying, it's a good analogy for me since it's something I understand...and continue to struggle with daily despite my dog's advanced age.

That's the key here, I think. I'm finding this year that my lesson from the world is that I don't know as much as I think I know. I'd seen some yoga on TV, I'd done a tape once, I had a whole bunch of people telling me I was going to love it. (And to you people I say, "Yeah, thanks.") I didn't think I knew everything about it but I thought I knew enough to go into a class and feel marginally comfortable.

Some people like goals that are way ahead of them. Huge goals like when you're 5 and you decide you want to be a firefighter. Or when you're 50 and you decide you want to run a marathon. Not impossible goals but goals that are going to require a big helping of failure on a regular basis as the person learns. I am not that person. I like a smaller stretch. I like a goal that I have the skills for but maybe am not using them yet or need to practice them or whatever. I wouldn't say I wanted to run a marathon. I'd start with a goal to run a mile and see how it went. The failure sets me back a lot, gets me really down on myself and saps my motivation. I know, you're shocked to hear that, I'm usually such a cock eyed optimist, sorry to burst the bubble.

It turns out that when you blog you start to see certain things as being sure content for the blog. There are other things that are definitely not content and then a few things that you can't decide about or that you need to approach from a specific angle before you can write about them in public like that. The problem comes when you have one of the latter category but it's so consuming to the writing part of your brain that you can't quite write about anything else until you've handled this one thing.

That other thing is Mrs. X's funeral mass. I knew I had to write about it but I didn't know how much I could write about it or how and yet if I didn't I couldn't go on to something else. Then I took this stupid yoga class (yes, I'm three, yes, it's not very enlightened but tough I need it, stupid yoga class) and it was the same thing. Which should be a ridiculous joke about how close to death I feel right now but it's not. They're both things about which I thought I knew, not everything, but enough to be called a foundation and therefore I would have at least the tools to handle the new parts. Just running a mile, not a marathon, not even a 10K, just my little mile, longer than I want to run but not so far that I'm discouraged.

I was wrong.

I've been to a lot of funerals and memorials and burials in my time. I've been to a decent number of Catholic masses in my time, even. Turns out that, much to my surprise, I've never been to a funeral mass before. Man, are those ever impersonal. That's what I thought anyway. The music was almost entirely new, composed in the early 80s and I found it wildly boring. I like classic old school hymns with the 4 part harmony written out in the hymnal. Steph and Bud each read a short piece from the bible but aside from that the priest was the only other person who spoke. No, wait, I think the cantor did a couple of pompous introductions to hymns. It made me angry. I wanted something personal to hang onto. I kept blaming the priest and the church for making such an impersonal service and not letting us, as a congregation, have any of her. I thought maybe if I'd been going to mass regularly all my life that the ritual of it might have been comforting and I hoped that was why Mrs. X chose this type of service but mostly I was mad at the stupid church (stupid yoga!) for doing such a crap funeral.

Then Steph got up again. She read a beautiful piece that I'm not re-printing here until I ask her what she thinks about that (Steph, what do you think about that?). It was far and away my favorite part of the service. It was something that Mrs. X left behind and it was delivered in a way that let us know it was part of her and it said as much within the reading. In speaking about the reading, though, Steph explained that her mother had designed the service. She hadn't chosen readings but she'd chosen all the (wait for it) music.

I felt horrible. Hideous and unworthy. So I cried. Finally. But it wasn't really for Mrs. X it was for me. Which made me feel more horrible. In the one all to brief moment of silent prayer I simply thanked her and apologized over and over.

I don't remember when I realized that the mass had been personal. It wasn't right then. It might have been outside the church on the way to the reception. It might have been on the plane home that night. It might have been days later walking the dog in the neighborhood. I realized that she'd crafted a service of people. I suspect that Mrs. X's mass was this particular young priest's first funeral mass for a person he had known in life and through last rites. He told a story of Mrs. X asking him to play his viola for her. She was the only other person who had ever heard him play besides the other priest in the rectory. There was a harpist (yet another thing I was all pissed about). My mom spoke to her later, though, and found out that she's only been playing about a year and I don't know how Mrs. X met her but she'd had the harpist in to play for her before she died. Steph found that brilliant piece she read in her mother's night table. And the last hymn? It was Amazing Grace. My mom and I sang it in harmony.

I am so not done with this. I keep thinking that I am or that I at least know where I am in the process but I don't. I don't feel done with her. Me, the girl who really does believe that every time I see you is the last time, wasn't done yet. Mrs. X was the first woman friend I had who didn't know me as a kid or because of my parents. She just knew me as and for me and she liked me. Later she bridged that gap between being my friend and being my mother's friend in a way I can only hope to emulate as I grow up and have younger friends.

I want to tell you about the year ChemE and the kids and I made her a birthday cake. I want to tell you about ChemE's wedding shower at Mrs. X's house. I want to tell you about the last time I saw her and the way she, quite uncharactaristically, held my hand. I guess I will someday but I can't right now. It all seems sort of stupid (stupid yoga!) and useless and over-dramatized compared to how everyone else is feeling about it. While also feeling like it's not exactly right to publish all that. You know that feeling where if you say something out loud then you lose it? It feels like that.