The Jensen Yoga Class
Like my world, your world is filled with humans of a variety of shapes, natures, experiences, and characteristics. When I prepare a class to teach my joy is the flashes of friends and family I use to build a masterpiece. Certain people are connected to certain poses, or faces bring to mind certain words of wisdom. When I people reflect, I can make a class much more inspirational and it seems to cater superbly to the assorted flavours that show up. It’s often my family that will sneak their way into the planning. I get serious merriment from my smorgasbord family, who put together into a Yoga class would resemble a Starbucks order for the office.
My twin, Chelsey, would park herself in the middle as to have a perfectly calculated view, and proceed to move her mat exactly perpendicular to the adjacent mat. This adjacent mat happens to be my brother Garrett’s, only because she set it up, as he just texted thinking Yoga was at noon. In the back left corner is my older sister’s mat, rolled out a little ‘out of the way’ as Alissa knows she is going to want to do it her way sometimes, but not disturb everyone else. My dad, Craig is still roaming the hallway as he thinks I invited him for ‘yogurt.’ Craig is a man who is physically active and spiritual everyday outdoors, yet still can’t link the fact that our indoor organized city version of this is called Yoga. Little does he know I am going to trick him into doing Yoga. I’ll just ask him to replace the baseboards – completing a series of high and low lunges called Sun Salutation A, followed by his long proud gaze at his finished product, AKA meditation. My mother Linda will place herself near the front, a spot where she can stay involved and easily follow, but not too closely. During class my mothers face is proud, relaxed and calm. It’s as if everything I say has a deep meaning, including the time I accidentally said, “and feel it crawling up your butt,” upon which my mom would manage to find some spiritually complex, life changing meaning to. Garrett seems to be working hard, choosing all the weird and advanced options, even though he’s only done Yoga a sprinkling of times. His sweaty t-shirt and not really ideal for yoga ‘yoga-pants’ are debuting his next move. Managing to dance the worm into an updog ‘situation,’ this gentle giant has created b-boy Yoga hilarity. With a serious sweaty face dangling between his legs in downward dog, Alissa can’t help but laugh.
Alissa has chosen deep, stretchy poses that make her feel relaxed and highly available to observe from the back of the room. Plumber butts, hair nests, aesthetically pleasing poses and pretzelled bodies, it's as if she’s mentally photographing a spread for Yoga Journal, but will probably have to submit it to Mad magazine. Chelsey continues to move very focused, taking great pride in smooth transitions and challenging herself to the edge in each movement. Dad has made his way half way around the baseboards.
At the end, the room looks somewhat like a zombie apocolyse. Still, strewn bodies wheezing Darth Vader deep breaths. I can't figure out if it's Ujjayi Breath in it's perfection or everyone is passed out sleeping. A mixed ending for a mixed bag of nuts. What a lovely class. My Yoga class isn't different than your 'life class,' so have a chuckle and embrace the nuts you get to see and not see everyday! The spice of life is truly in variety and the ways in which we can accommodate, capacitate and illuminate these spicy lives.