I'm at the yoga retreat, where I'm not allowed to talk on my cell phone but there is free wireless access in the "kafe". Niiiice. I am happy.
I arrived at about 3:30 this afternoon, and promptly met mz reezee at the front door. We went to our room and opened the door, giddy with anticipation. The rooms are billed as "modest" and we knew we were not going to have a private bath. The room is so modest, it's smaller than my college dorm room. There are two beds, with about two feet clearance between the two. Seriously- if one of us happens to kick a leg off the bed in the night, there's a good chance the other will be injured. And reezee has long legs. After we giggled quietly- everything is quiet here- we suited up to go to our first yoga class.
The class was billed as intermediate- not too easy, not too vigorous. We were excited to be there, and found a place by the wall. I was behind the pole, but somehow I always pick the worst place in the room for yoga classes, so I have learned to be adaptable. The class began as most do, with some breathing exercises. A lot of heavy breathing, some audible sighing. The people in this class are pretty serious. The poses were the standards, except that the instructor seemed to want to spend the first hour doing simple breathing and stretching things so we didn't start the sun salutations until an hour into the class. Which was wierd. And she had us do some pose that she called something along the lines of "wind releasing pose" which made me very paranoid that the next step was going to involve the guided release of certain sphincter muscles. But no wind was audibly released during the move, and everyone was happy.
The problem with this class, and the reason I won't take another class with this person, was that she would just start chattering about the poses and the breathing when really all you wanted was to just get on with it. She would start correcting someone, and ten minutes later your entire body would be shaking and your muscles would be sending fire-hot messages of pain to your brain. And then she would count back from three, slowly, and THEN she would tell you to turn your gaze or some other such crap, and by the time you were back on the mat the entire state of Massachusetts was flooded with the lactic acid of 75 eager yogis. Painful.
But that's why there's a guided meditation at the end. By the time we were out of the room, I was so relaxed and pleased, I could only remember that I didn't like the class, but I still felt the benefits of the class. So it's all good.
Tomorrow the schedule starts at 6:30. That's if I can't sleep. And, chances are, I won't be able to sleep. But I'm going to try to sleep in, considering there are about seventy yoga classes each day and I won't be THAT sorry to miss just one. I need sleep too, and I get three whole mornings to sleep in before I'm back on Lentil Standard Time, so you know I'm going to live it up.
Sleep well, my friends!