About a month ago I signed up for a yoga class. This was for a variety of reasons. First of all, it was being offered by Mat-Su College, so the cost to me was minimal. And secondly, because this was an actual college class. In the past, I’ve taken classes in town, at Midnight Sun Yoga, and anyone could attend.

There was no limit put on class sizes and so they got quite full. My then yoga teacher got discovered (she is excellent) and the classes were then even more full. The mats in those classes were so close together that if you stretched out your arms, you’d touch the students on both side of you. Additionally, the teacher could not walk between the rows because there

were no rows, just mats next to one another. The room resembled a gym holding hurricane victims.

I decided to take this class because the size would be limited and there would be the sense of cohesion that comes with having the same people attend on a weekly basis.

I went to class today. It was right after strength training, which went over because Ben and I got into a mutual discussion about the current sorry state of the world. The Midnight Sun Yoga Studio has moved since I last attended class; it’s still in town but in a less direction location. Classes are held in the basement of the GCI Building, so there is more space available.

The students began trickling in soon after I arrived. Much to my surprise (although I ought not have been surprised), they were all under 20. It occurred to me that I am old enough to be their grandmother. Most paid me no mind because young people don’t interact much with those who they perceive to be older. I did talk at length with one student, R, who had a bulky boot on one foot. She told me she suffers from a rare genetic disease in which her metatarsals grow too long and need to be cut back. I kept asking her questions until I realized she was getting nervous talking to me. She didn’t have questions for me.

The class itself was okay. The instructor spent considerable time going over the course syllabus – I was really pleased to see that it has a writing component. We’re also supposed to keep a journal, and at the semester’s end write a 1,000 word essay. This, of course, is going to be to my liking.

The exercises were brief, but simple. Hero’s pose on the bolster, plank going into down dog, cat and dog. The best part of all was when after doing these exercises, the instructor showed us some wrist-limbering exercises. I’d been doing all these exercises as a part of body awareness/Feldenkrais training, and after, my wrists have been fatigued. I had never before thought about clenching my fists together and doing figure eights. It took me maybe a minute or so to figure out an easy way of doing this. The funny thing is, this morning I was having Hrimmi do figure eights around two buckets – I finally figured out that if I switched the hand that I was using to hold the lead, that this was a lot easier for her to do.

I’m glad to be taking this class. It’s a form of body awareness, so it will complement all the other work/play that I’m doing.

Next: 17. 1/17/19: The Treadmill Effect