I am not a joiner. I don’t get into trends, I don’t like groups that much. I like to pick and choose whom I spend time with. But there are times when I feel like I’m missing something. Particularly when it comes to trends a lot of women go in for.<\/p>\n
My friend Nancy Bea just did a blog post about the real importance of book discussion groups<\/a>: it’s all about the socializing, the connections. I totally agree; but I have never been able to find one I enjoy being part of. I guess the closest I’ve come is my Writer’s Group, which is just three women, and we meet sporadically, as our schedules allow. One of us just had a third baby, so she’s a bit strung out; the other just got a second book contract and a column at the Globe Mag<\/span> so she’s crazed. And I? My babies are growing up and my second book contract is merely brewing. The Globe<\/span> doesn’t return my queries. D’oh, d’oh, d’oh<\/a>! I am living in total suspension, waiting for people, just waiting for them to get back to me! Why am I always in this position? I should just get a normal job, rather than this roller coaster I’m on called a writing career.<\/p>\n Speaking of position, and of things I have not quite been able to get, I’d like to talk for a minute about yoga. For years I have been hearing about how great yoga is, how relaxing, how it is really strenuous, how it is great for meditative purposes, how it is a hot trend, etc., etc. I was not attracted to it in the least, because why would I want to spend an hour just stretching and breathing? You stretch to warm up for a real workout; you breathe to live! But — yoga clothes are cute, and I belong to this snazzy new gym, so I figured I’d give it a chance. On Sunday I went for my first class, with my friend Miriam. She gave me the choice of spinning at 9 a.m. or Kripalu yoga at 11:15. It was Sunday; enough said!<\/p>\n I got to the gym early and did some weights and stretches. Then I did about twenty minutes on the Stairmaster until I saw it was time. I rushed downstairs to the yoga studio. Inside, there were little sticky pastel mats spread out everywhere. I put my stuff on one that had no stuff near it, and a woman came over and said, “Uh, that’s my mat.” I walked away with a stupid expression on my face, having just given away the fact that I was the yoga newbie, and I went over to the shelves which housed mats, foam blocks, bolsters, belts, and Navajo blankets. Whoa. What kind of kinky stuff were we in for? I took the belt and went to the back in the sunny spot no one wanted. <\/p>\n My friend showed up late and lay down next to me. We were assuming the “corpse pose,” which is as you imagine it to be. The instructor was a lumpy woman in her sixties, who had a soft voice I could barely hear. She instructed us to relax every part of ourselves. She named part after part, and I found myself thinking, “But you missed my knee! And my thigh! And my chest!” And then, as I concentrated on relaxing, an oxymoron if you ask me, I found that I could not relax my arms. They were sticking out on the sticky mat and all I could think was, “RELAX, DAMN YOU! BEFORE SHE COMES BY AND SEES THAT YOU’RE NOT RELAXED!!!” <\/p>\n I must have tricked her. She jostled my feet a little; perhaps they were even more un-relaxed but I don’t know. Feets is feets. Anyway, then she told us to turn over on our sides and — rest! My friend whispered, “Now we have to rest!” And I laughed, which seemed all wrong for the mood. I thought, “Is she going to make me laugh for the whole class?” And I got all tense but also excited because it seemed like fun. <\/p>\n Then we had to stick our arms out, and suddenly my friend said, “Am I crowding you?” I said, “No, I’m fine!” And then she moved somewhere else! I thought that was funny, too. But it helped me concentrate on the class.<\/p>\n All through the class, whenever we had to stand, I found myself unable to hold the pose, not because it was strenuous, but because my feet were sweaty and slipping off the mat! By the end of the class, I ached just from trying not to slip around. <\/p>\n And that night, I had a terrible pain in my knee. Not my right knee, either; my LEFT knee!<\/p>\n I guess I can’t even do yoga right!<\/p>\n Ned said, “It’s too mellow for you. With belly dance, you get to be girlie and work out really hard. It’s perfect for you!” And there’s no sticky mats.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I am not a joiner. I don’t get into trends, I don’t like groups that much. I like to pick and choose whom I spend time with. But there are times when I feel like I’m missing something. Particularly when it comes to trends a lot of women go in for. My friend Nancy Bea […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-hn","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1077\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}