Druggie Yogi

I taught a yoga class last night to a class of 14-15 year old girls. I've taught a handful of times before and so this wasn't going to be anything too challenging until I came down with a cold. I really didn't want to flake out on these girls so I decided to teach anyway despite my treacherous sinuses.

I've been in a Nyquil induced coma for the past few days but sleepyness doesn't mesh well with yoga. It would be dangerous to doze off in the middle of "Cow Face Pose" so I decided to try a less soporific drug. I dug around in the bottom of my medicine cabinet for something new and exciting. All my medicines have long since fallen out of their packaging so I took fate into my own hands. Somewhere among the crusty, damp unlabeled tablets of forgotten medicines I found one that wasn't too water damaged that read "anithis.." on the foil backing. Anything but Nyquil, right? I popped it in, crossed my fingers and hopped in the car to go to class.

Lucky for me, the mystery medicine only made my zen mas zenny and my down dog downright delightful. Yoga is trippy enough without being on mystery medicine. The girls wanted to do some balancing poses and I felt as stable as a giraffe on a trampoline as I tried to show them a few of the basic positions. But we all had a great time and they were beginner level anyway so they didn't mind that my Dancer Pose looked more like the Chicken Dance.

At the end of yoga practice, you traditionally end with corpse pose which is essentially lying on your back, relaxing, and letting your tensions go. After an hour of practice, I led the girls into corpse pose and with the aid of my drug-induced equanimity, talked us all into pure bliss. I was saying stuff like "see the colors in your breath" and "you are one with the earth - feel your energies unite." The girls were totally going for it and 15 minutes later we were still lying there, still as stone getting jiggy with our inner hippies. A parent finally opened the door to the room and shook us out of it otherwise we'd probably still be lying there drooling on ourselves. It was a awesome yoga session! I'll be sad when this cold clears up and I have to go back to struggling to find nirvana rather than struggling to get out of it.