Aversion

For research for the novel I'm working on, I've been reading the blogs of people who practice yoga. I don't know much about yoga -- except that I hate doing it -- and I figure I can soak up a lot about it from people's writing about their everyday experience. I'm sure each one would tell me that the only way to learn it is to experience it, but I've tried, and it's really not for me.

While I was reading, Cris called from Jenny's in Oakland; she's cat sitting while Jenny is out of town for the weekend. (I went over there last night, though I didn't spend the night as Cris is doing tonight and tomorrow.) When I told her I was reading about yoga -- which she practices occasionally -- she immediately said I ought to do it, that it would be really good for me. So I had to remind her how much I hate doing it, based on my experience in a class at the Sybase gym several years ago.

"Why do you hate it?" she pressed.

"Well," I said, "you know I don't have trouble with forms -- I learned tai chi and really liked it, and I never had any problem with forms in zen practice. But for me doing yoga is like trying to learn a foreign language while having someone smash you in the mouth every couple of minutes."

Not that anyone else is smashing me in the mouth. It's my own body that does it. My body rebels, is utterly at odds with almost any "pose," particularly anything that involves bending over so that my diaphragm is compressed -- it means I can't breathe. Utterly useless.