Dear Kid,
I’ve started doing Salutations to the Sun (and by “started” I mean I did them Monday morning and then attempted to do them again last evening). Sun Salutations (as they are also known) are a series of yoga poses in a specific order. There are a lot of variations to Sun Salutations but they are all variations on the same theme (kind of like there are lots of variations of chocolate ice cream. Which reminds me….I wonder what’s in the freezer…).
The version I am working on is structured to go something like this.
Mountain pose—stand with your feet on the floor arms by your side. I got this. No problem.
Raised arms pose—hands come up and if you don’t have my back, you might bend backward a bit. But I do have my back (lucky me) so I reach for the sky.
Forward bend—the picture of this shows a person bent in half with her wrists on the floor and her elbows behind her knees. I settle for a gentle nod in the direction of the floor as I bend as far as I can go. Hi there floor. Maybe someday I’ll get closer.
Low Lunge—not walking lunges, just a lunge pose. I teeter. I totter. Booker backs away. In a triumph over gravity, I do not fall.
Plank pose—a push up pose without the pushing.
Locust pose—if you really want to see what this looks like, you’ll have to look it up. As far as I can figure, you put all the parts that bend (knees, toes, elbows) on the floor and everything else in the air.
Cobra pose—legs on the ground, do a sort of push up with the front half of your body. It would probably embarrass most live cobras, but as there are none in the house, I don’t worry.
Downward Facing Dog—I love this pose. Think Booker stretching before a walk. Except he keeps his head up which is Not the Way to Do It. Hands and feet on the floor, butt in the air.
Low lunge—using the other leg. Same teetering. Booker hasn’t come any closer so he seems to feel no immediate threat if I should happen to land sideways on the floor.
Back bend—gracefully return to standing and bend backward. Uh-huh.
Mountain pose—back to where we started.
There are a prescribed number of breaths you are supposed to hold each pose for. Nothing I’ve found says anything about the prescribed number of pants and grunts for each pose so I sort of made it up as I went along. Since I was by myself, no one seemed to mind.
In all honesty, I felt GREAT after I did two salutations Monday morning. I think you’re supposed to do a lot more and hold the poses a lot longer than the 5 seconds I did. But seriously I felt fabulous. I decided I would do them every morning.
Uh-huh.
Tuesday morning Life got in the way, but I don’t remember why. Wednesday morning I brought the yoga mat down to the family room thinking that trying to do the poses on the mat would be better than slipping and sliding around on the rug. Once I’d gotten that far, Life shoved in front of me. I tried yelling “No Cuts” but it didn’t have any effect.
So I thought I would do a set Wednesday after work and before Pi got home.
Let me go on record as saying that you really can’t cook ground turkey and do Sun Salutations at the same time. It is not graceful. It is not invigorating. It is not even safe. It is entertaining if you are a bystander who happens to be standing by and watching. Booker found it all highly enjoyable. Or perhaps he was just hoping some of the turkey would fall on the floor.
Tomorrow I will definitely do Sun Salutations in the morning. I hope.
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