Sweaty and broken: what I learned on a stranger’s yoga mat

Glowing and gleeful on the stage at Aria, surrounded a cadre of fellow yoga teachers, Nan issued the first instructions of the practice: “Turn to the person on the mat next to yours, introduce yourself, and say what you’re grateful for today.”

Shit.

Introductions and handshakes are the kale of my life – I know they’re good for me, but I endure them, barely. (Also, I’m less than fond of small group discussions that involve writing on flip charts, but I digress.) Still, a Gorilla Yogis event is, by design, a sociable gathering, so I ignored the wall to my right (intentional choice; cuts the chit-chat factor down by fifty percent) and turned to the man on my left, hand out, corners of the mouth turned up.

“Iiiiiiiiiii’m Miiiiiiiiike,” he said, lurching out a hand toward mine. His voice sounded like one of those electronic scramblers the villain uses to call the cops after he’s kidnapped the plucky heroine and wants to issue a threat. He pumped my hand up. Pause. Then down. “I’m grateful to be here today … because a while ago, I was in a car accident. I rolled over three-and-a-half times. And so … I’m glad to be here.”

He let go of my hand, head listing down, eyes looking up. He was waiting for my Oprahtastic-life-is-good declaration. I paused and listened to gratefulness being shared all around me, as the roomful of sleekly groomed yoga muffins shook hands, setting thousands of Tibetan prayer beads and armfuls of Mexican hammered-silver bangles to jangling. Perpetually babygirl voices introduced Kayla-Kerrie-Katelynne to Meghan-Maya-Madyson. And here I was, looking at Mike’s face, which, I now noticed, seemed as if someone had, once upon a time, given the features a slight quarter turn, with not-insignificant force, and had left them there.

I reached over and touched his arm. A moment ago I had not been able to think of one grateful thing, but now I could.

“You, Mike. I’m grateful you’re here.”

He nodded, suddenly shy, and we both looked at our feet.

The practice started. I breathed, closed my eyes, stayed on my own mat. Still, it was hard to ignore Mike. He moaned. He creaked. I heard odd popping sounds from time to time, like his bolts were falling off. He stopped, frequently, to wipe his dripping face. At one point, the class turned to face in another direction, and I realized he was no longer on his mat. I started to worry, to wonder if I should call over a teacher, or go look for him. He’d rolled over three-and-a-half times, he'd said, and suddenly I realized the significance of that “half.” At the end of whatever had happened, Mike was hanging upside down. I closed my eyes. When I opened them, we were directed to stretch out our arms in a “t” and grasp the wrist of our neighbor. A sweaty hand found mine, and there was Mike. I squeezed back in welcome.

We were instructed to stand and find a partner: “Hold on to your partner’s wrists, then lean back,” Nan told us. All around us, shiny heads, sleek with expensive botanicals and argan oil, leaned in toward each other, and hundreds of manicured toes lined up in perfect symmetry. Over in our dark corner, Mike and I faced each other like Quasimodo and his menopausal gargoyle. A weird, burbling chuckle came out of Mike as he grasped me. “I could break your wrists right now,” he said in that techno-villain voice, and he sounded equally awed and frightened at the thought. Jesus, I thought, just put your hands around my neck and put me out of my misery. Aloud, I said, “I trust you.” He relaxed, visibly, and leaned back. Based on the sounds he was making, I’m not sure if he was enjoying the traction or painfully slipping several vertebrae, but he stayed with it until Nan told us to stand up.

“Now find a place on your partner’s mat,” she instructed, and Mike companionably patted a spot on his towel-covered mat, which shot up a shower of moisture. I remembered the time we’d done yoga at the corner of Lake & Lyndale during a boiling-hot Open Streets festival. We'd all put our arms around each other in a giant Circle of Love. I was feeling the love, oh yeah, until I realized that my right hand was nestled directly in the hairy and gushing armpit of the man next to me.

Guess what, I lived.

I sat in front of Mike, toboggan style, and Nan instructed the person in back to deliver a back-and-neck massage. “Oooooh, I’m not that creepy,” Mike said, in a voice that actually sounded like a textbook definition of  "creepy." I said what I’d said before: “I trust you.”

After a few lovely moments, Nan instructed the massagers to put their hands directly behind the hearts of their partners, and she told us receivers to lean back, to lean into those hands that were holding us up. “You are not alone, you are never alone, there is always love and community around you,” she said.

Nan, I thought, this is crazy talk, so please shut your lying mouth. I let my mind play over the alone-making conversations in which I participate every day, most beginning with the ultimate lie-of-concern, “how are you?” I hear “How are you?” as a prelude to “Next, I will tell you what you're going to do for me,” or “How are you?” as a quick trip into “How am I, really, let me talk a little bit more,” or “How are you?” as “I’m sorry, did you say something? I was looking at my iPhone.”

That creepy villain voice brought me back, practically in my ear. “You can lean back farther,” Mike was saying. “You won’t hurt me. I can hold you.”

His fingers were sweaty. His body was broken. He was, based on what I'd heard and seen in the last hour, experiencing some serious levels of pain. But he was sure he couldn’t hurt me, no matter how far I leaned into him, and he was willing to hold me up.

Nan, I thought, I take it back, I’m sorry. There’s only this moment, this Sunday morning with the sleek-haired girls all around me, and this sweaty, broken man who is willing to support me. Since all I have is now, then I am not alone, not in this perfect moment. And you’re right, Nan, you’re so very right. 

Beijing, yoga, 6 a.m.

View from studio window, Beijing Marriott City Wall, 2011

The first thing that has to happen is to find the gym attendant and beg her to turn off the music. Realize that perhaps "turn off" is not the right phrase.  Try "cancel" and "extinguish." Experiment with placing hands over ears, finger to lips. Finally, See recognition in her eyes: Oh, so this is the one American who does not prefer 80s techno-pop during workouts.

Follow her to the key closet, down a long haul to the tiny studio space, and watch her unlock yet another door. The music, blessedly, stops. Put hands together in prayer and say "namaste" to her when she emerges. Be glad she doesn't laugh.

The next thing is to roll out the beat-up mat and take a place on it. Look out the window. Okay, this is different. Laundry drying on three different lines, all of it uniformly grey, one of those three-wheel aluminum foil mobiles parked next to a hut, a skyline swooping with pagodas.

Take a breath. Take another. Have no idea what to do next, so ask for help.

And, miraculously, receive it, from the teachers I've been following. Jeffrey asks for Sun A, Paula demands too many Sun Bs. Do them anyway. Moya has a great new idea for triangle, twisting triangle, triangle on toast. Here is Myra, asking for the longest-ever utkatasana and then asking for a lift at the corners of the mouth, too.

Keep moving. Each time you greet another day in this disorienting place and time, know that there is one thing to do. Pick up the mat and take the elevator to the studio. Then start by convincing today's attendant that the music really, really needs to be turned off.

Namaste.

What's Next

An entire day at the zoo, in August. A long walk to the playground, followed by a visit to the ice cream shop. Going to see Santa. It never mattered what the activity was. The one constant was that as soon as the key turned in the lock, as soon as the backpacks and the purses and the sticky bags of leftover cotton candy were laid down, while the shoes were being slipped off and plans were being made for supper and bath, Emma would ask: “What’s Next?” 

There are lifetimes of accusations in those two words. “What else do you have?” was a large portion of the meaning, pointing the way to the inadequacy of what had been offered and rendering the swift judgment that if you thought that was going to be enough to entertain a person of her caliber on a sunny day or a spring break or a Christmas holiday, then you had better reach a little deeper into your bag of tricks, no matter how close it was to bedtime.

The question also signaled the aching desire to be anywhere but here, in this insufficient home with this falling-short family. What’s Next could be across the alley in the Shangri-La of the Brimacomb’s house, or with her boyfriend’s family, or in Beijing. What it most certainly is not, is here. Or now. 

In the years I’ve been her mother, I’ve moved from being an older mom to becoming, in a number of ways, a truly old one. “You looked so pretty,” she would say when we re-watched the video of her arrival day in Wuhan on the Family Anniversary each year. The hardness of that “d,” and the spit of the past tense, would shoot into the conversation like an arrow. Not a pretty mom. Not a young mom. Not enough mom.

With that hard “d” ringing in my head, I did what I could do, day by day. Sometimes, most times, it seemed all I could do to step away from my failings was to step onto my yoga mat. I unrolled it in studio refuges or the grotty basement of the YMCA. I took a deep breath. And then I took one more. I aimed to stop marinating in a woeful past or vividly conjuring an even-worse future. I worked to make peace with my now, the very place she never wanted to be, certainly not as long as it was a now that had me in it. 

I remember buying this house. I remember standing outside and taking photographs of it to attach to the adoption paperwork. I remember trying so hard. It never once occurred to me then that this house would never be the refuge I dreamed it would be for her. If not exactly a prison, then perhaps, more generously, it has been nothing but a launching pad, and one that never seemed to be getting to launch time quickly enough.

She has been thrusting herself into the future as fast as she can, for as long as she can. She reaches out her hands and clutches big fistfuls of time, willing it to move her along, sure that what’s next has got to be better than here. Anywhere but here. Any time but now.

I step onto my mat. I take a deep breath and put my clasped hands on my third eye. I bend forward; I wish her everything, I wish her nothing: “Namaste.”

A Yogini's Plea: 86 the 3-2-1

Because I would always rather concentrate on something ELSE in yoga class (and anything is usually preferable to thinking about how much I hate side-angle pose), I listen very carefully to my teachers’ vocabulary. I’m a word person, and I pay attention to exactly what people are saying, perhaps just a bit too much.

Lately, I’ve noticed a new phrase cropping up all over town. Whether I’m practicing with 150 of my closest friends at Lake Calhoun or wilting on the pool deck with the other mommies at the Y, I am hearing it with increasing frequency.

The phrase is the yogic equivalent of foreshadowing, and it involves the teacher leading the class into an especially taxing contortion and then flicking a drop of ice water into our mutual hell-on-mat by intoning, “we’ll be holding for three … two … moving into side plank in one … ONE.”

I hear “3-2-1” these days even more than other yogic clichés such as “take the biggest breath you’ve taken all day.” In fact, it’s far eclipsed such gems as “liberate your kidneys!” and “tighten that sphincter!”

Do I like it? No, Sam I Am, I do not like that three-two-one. It’s required several classes for me to figure out why, though, but the biggest reason is that 3-2-1 is a major in-the-moment killer. If I’m supposed to BE on my mat and BE in the pose, why are you telling me how soon I’ll stop being there? I remember my very first yoga classes with the Incredible Andrea Dishong, who would twist a class into a pose and then saunter over to begin a long workshop with one student on, say, optimum foot placement in Warrior One. In those early days, when I never went to class without falling over at least once, I would fell the panic right away: “Doesn’t she know we’re here?” I’d think to myself. “I am going to DIE in this pose before she remembers!”

Andrea, who insisted that yoga was about finding calm in chaos, remained capricious with hold times and revealed nothing about what was ahead. She was the chaos provider, not the helpful-hint giver. At the time I hated her, and now I worship her. This is not an Ashram-version of Stockholm Syndrome, but an indicator of her great influence on a new yogini. Sometimes we held a pose for a very long time. Sometimes one side was five times as long as the other, because that guy on the purple mat just could not figure out what she meant when she said, “Widen your stance.” Andrea had a Whitmanesque love of contradicting herself, and she was the queen of chaos.

She was right, and here’s why. Nothing happens in yoga that doesn’t have a lesson for me about my own life. As I hear those 3-2-1 teachers letting me know all about what is going to happen next, and as I watch a significant portion of the class jumping into the next pose before they’ve really been in the current one, I realize that there is not one experience in my life in which advance warning would have helped me out. It’s not exactly been 50 years of ponies-for-my-birthday and surprise parties, but there have been genuine pleasures along the way. I’m glad that I never knew about the next crisis that was brewing, and I’m equally grateful that I never had a heads-up about the small pleasures that lay just ahead on my path – the random times when I got to sit quietly in someplace beautiful, or the very few moments I could share with a much-missed friend who lifted my spirit.

You don’t need to tell me what’s next. I’m a full-chaos yoga girl, and I’m proud of it. Thanks, Andrea.

It's Okay to Hate the Teacher -- Eight Lessons for a New Yogi

Given the fact that I was smacked on the face during utkatasana, rolled on during reclined twists, and farted in the general direction of during a long series of squats during yoga class today, I can tell it’s New Year’s Resolution Time at my local gym. Before I became TPFSY (Too Poor for Studio Yoga), January would pass by with no visible changes in attendance at the nice-smelling, feng-shui’d practice spaces I used to frequent. Since everyone there was Totally Committed and Had a Beautiful Practice, they showed up year-round and on-time (early, even!). They didn’t let the Jenny Craig commercials that started running on December 26 shame then into Moya’s 8:05 Fitness Yoga class at the Southdale YMCA. (Held in what used to be the spin space, it still smells of burned-out gearshifts and man sweat, which makes me want to weep at the thought of Jeffrey, Tarana Studio, and those eucalyptus-scented incense sticks he used to wave around).

I’ve been practicing yoga regularly (I hate to say “seriously” because it sounds so pole-up-the-ass-y) for about eight years. I can honestly say that I was the most pathetic yogi on the planet for a good three of those years, and maybe more. I grunted. I sweated. I fell over during every class, in poses like, oh, say, triangle (not a real balance-buster for the normal person). I’m not that much better now, but I’m less visibly pathetic. Still, just because I’m not falling over doesn’t mean I don’t sympathize. So during today’s full-to-the-resolution-brim class, in between the smacks and the farts, I decided to create a Quick Guide for the New Yogi, with some tips I wish someone had shared with me back in my early days.

Lesson One. Show up on time. And if you simply must be tardy, and you are currently tipping the scales at a nifty two hundred pounds, don’t tromp past all the other mats in your big dirty outside shoes, and rearrange your rustly coat, while the rest of us are accessing our inner whatevers in child’s pose. Lady with the bad haircut and the kittycat t-shirt, size XXL, feel my wrath. Wait until an appropriate time, open the door quietly, and unroll your mat in the closest space possible. You're already late; don't be loud, too.

Lesson Two. Close your mouth and breathe through your nose. The teacher isn’t kidding. Breathing really does help. But if you keep imitating a Japanese koi during class, you’ll never have a chance to find that out for yourself.

Lesson Three. Take your socks off. If your feet, or any of your other parts, are that grotty, go outside to the weight room, which, to my delicate sensibility, resembles the yard of a penitentiary and will be much more to your liking. Otherwise, you are going to slip around so much that there is sure to be a cross-mat violation with your neighbor. The way things are currently going in my life, odds are that the neighbor will be me.

Lesson Four. Stop looking around. It will just depress you and it will make me very nervous. I once had a teacher say that if you walked out of class and could describe the person who had been on the mat next you, you weren’t doing yoga at all. In short: Stay On Your Mat.

Lesosn Five. Brush up on “left” and “right.” Here’s a little exercise: Hold your hands out, fingers straight ahead and thumbs touching. See the letter “L” made by that one special hand and thumb? That’s your Left Hand, and it’s attached to your Left Side! If this little exercise does not do the trick, use a Sharpie to write the 411 on your knuckles, like a prison tattoo. Your fellow classmates, who do not really want eye contact with you when you’re on the wrong foot every single time we do Warrior II, will thank you.

Lesson Six. It’s okay to hate the teacher. I think back on the best yoga teachers I’ve ever had, and I hated them so bitterly and miserably, and with such specific plans for their demise, that it’s a wonder some of them didn’t just immolate about half an hour into the proceedings. (That’s the point at which, even now, despair usually overtakes me and I realize I will be stuck in this room For. Ever.) I think it’s better to allow yourself to really fixate on how much your hate that teacher’s well-toned behinder. Go ahead and despise deeply -- it may allow you to stop thinking about the pain in your knees for a few seconds longer. And now, a personal note: Andrea, I owe you a special apology here. Yes, now I do understand that you were in fact aware that we were all holding side angle for HOURS while you were helping that grandma understand that a bent knee and a straight leg were Two Different Things. You were a wonderful teacher and you did not deserve the evilness I sent your way.

Lesson Seven. Find the top of your mat.  Stand on your mat.  Walk forward.  When you feet touch the floor, back up.  You are now at the top of your mat.  Stay there until further notice.  Also?  When all the mats in the room are not perfectly parallel, the Buddha weeps (another shout out to Andrea, who taught me this important tidbit).

Lesson Eight. It’s going to hurt. For the first two years of my practice, I never climbed up my front steps after yoga class in anything but a whimpering crouch. My butt hurt all the time. If you’re doing it right, yours will hurt, too.

So why bother? Bother because it IS hard. Bother because progress IS slow. Every class, you’ll move forward the thickness of a piece of paper. One hour of your time invested, and all you’ll have to show for it is one flimsy sheet of paper. And if you think that’s not worth it, look at a phone book some time.

Someday, you’ll be a great yogi. Or, maybe not. But every single class that you attend, you’ll leave in better shape than when you went in. And, I hope, you won’t remember anything about me, that lady on the mat next to you.

The Guardian Angel Job Interviews

The year that has just, mercifully, ended, was not a good one for me by any measure. In my record of 51 years, it hovers at the bottom, hanging out with the other delinquent years that included miserable family situations, unemployment, health issues and general crappiness. With a cigarette dangling from its sneering mouth and the collar of its tattered jacket turned up, 2009 kept daring me to knock the chip off its shoulder and I, perennial weakling, could not. As the time crept by, it kept opening up new little boxes of annoyances and miseries, and all I could do was wait for last night, the 31st, when I knew we could say goodbye.

In a firm attempt not to wallow, I first tried to isolate the worst parts of the year and find some good in them.

Okay, not much there.

On to “lessons learned,” a perennial end-of-bad-year favorite. On that front, I am able to dig up something, so I share it here.

The lesson starts in the spa-not-a-spa, as a friend of mine calls the creepily calming atmosphere of a big-time breast center. I’ve been called back, then back again, for “follow ups,” and I’m discovering new layers to this place, all of them increasingly depressing. The cheery checkup room with the free coffee and the 70s hits piped in overhead has been replaced with another “lounge,” further back, where no one is lounging and everyone is grim-faced. These chicks all seem to be in one piece, at least so far, so I imagine Lounge Three and Lounge Four and Lounge Ninth Circle of Hell stretched down the reassuringly mauve-colored halls, the inhabitants increasingly mutilated and frightened.

I leave, I am imaged, I am called back, I am spoken to in quiet tones. Next Steps are recommended. I return to the lounge, and to my dressing cubicle, and I am overcome with loneliness and despair. What lies ahead in the weeks to come is not going to be good, and I cast about in my spirit for some help. Unfailingly, my mother, dead 11 years and eternally helpful, arrives. I sense her presence, her comfort, her compassion. A sob escapes my lips, as I sit there on the bench, and I sense immediately the stiffening of spines in the next room, the pause in the flicker of magazine pages. I can’t do this to these women. I can’t be the She Who Cries in Dressing Room. I pull myself together and exit quickly, sensing pairs of eyes on my back as I leave, knowing they are hoping it was my unlucky day today, and not theirs.

One week later, I am back, moved to the area just behind spa-not-a-spa, which can best be called – oh that’s right, it’s called Surgery. I am alone. This morning, I dressed in the required loose-fitting button-down shirt, got my kids off to school and drove myself here. I am alone when the nurse barks out directions, I am alone as they position me as uncomfortably as possible on the table, I am alone when the needles start. And then I’m not alone. Mom is back. She offers comfort and love and sympathy, and I begin to cry, which annoys everyone present, I’m assuming because it makes me jiggle and makes their jobs harder and holds up the next appointment. My Irish roots don’t need a big push into the self-pity vat. I start snuffling, and I realize from the reactions of the workers that I Need to Stop This.

So, somehow, I ask Mom to leave. And I ask, consciously ask, for some help to get me through this.

What happens next is surprising to me by any standards, since I am the sort of person whose imagery in guided meditations tends to lead toward “I’m lying on a mat in a cold room” and never seems to make the leap to that warm sandy beach with the toe-tickling tide. I’m not good at summoning up anything other than what is happening right now or, possibly, what even worse thing could be happening in the future.

But, in spite of my usual lack of imagery-calling-up-titude, Jeffrey arrives.

I have to state here that Jeffrey is a real person. He runs a real yoga studio that I used to frequent back when I wasn’t TPFSY (Too Poor for Studio Yoga). I have always admired him, respected him and felt totally inferior to him. His ability to sense when I am about to topple over in pain, and to arrive at my side to bend me into a posture of – deargodhowcanhedothis – even more pain, is astonishing. The little mmmmms he delivers with his excellent-but-feared adjustments simply add to his mystique.

And now he’s in the needle biopsy room. He’s shooed Mom to the corner, where she’s dabbing at her eyes with a hankie, and he takes over. “You need to be still or this will take forever,” I hear him command, and I love the way he lisps over the ssstill. He keeps talking, happy he got a smile out of me. He reminds me of what I can do, what I have done, to find order in the face of chaos. “This is just like the 107th Sun Salutation of a Mala,” he says, firmly, “and you will pull it together now.” I sense that he’s folding his arms, waiting for me to snap out of it.

I do. I stop crying and I start leaning – into the pain, the loneliness, the fear. The situation is not going away or getting any better, but I’m moving with it, not against it, and as awful as these feelings are, at least I’ve stopped snuffling about them.

The doctors finish and the nurse helps me up, stuffing ice bags into my bra and barking at me about rest and aspirin. Jeffrey vanishes, padding away on his bare feet to go Tough-Love some other yogi who’s in divorce court, or having a root canal, or considering suicide on this ugly November afternoon, I suppose.

Not much has changed. I still don’t have anyone to meet me in the waiting room, or to ask me how it went, or to drive me home. I still have to go to the grocery store on the way home, and I will have to carry all the bags in by myself. No one will ask me what I want for lunch, and then prepare it for me. No one will ask, because no one wants to know, how my day was. That’s the part that stays the same, every hard day of this year that is harder than frozen tears.

But I made it through something scary today, all alone. And now all I have to do is get through the rest of this year, and make it safely into the next one. No one wants to fix me a sandwich, but someone, strangely, doesn’t seem to mind coming to my rescue when the situation calls for some Big Girl Behavior.

Thanks, Jeffrey. Sorry, Mom.

A Shimmy in Place of a Crow: New Year’s Resolutions Redux

Whenever anyone asks me what my New Year’s resolution is going to be, I always say, with complete seriousness, that this year, I’m going to start smoking. Just saying these words out loud drives everyone around me crazy, especially my children.

Each year’s conversation, predictably, goes something like this:

Children: What do you want for Christmas, Mom?

Me: Ashtrays. And lighters. I’d ask for cartons of cigarettes, too, but you’re probably too young to buy them legally. I’m really going to stick to my resolution this year!

Children: Squeals of dismay, followed by: Plead, plead, plead. Lecture, lecture, lecture.

I grew up in a household with two chain smokers who favored unfiltered Chesterfields, in quantities approaching “bulk,” so my lungs have surely seen enough tar and nicotine to last a lifetime. But a gal can dream, and I always picture myself as Bette Davis. Early years Bette, that is, before the emphysema got her.

In addition to my perennially doomed smoking-related resolution, I try to make one additional promise to myself each year. Two years ago, it was to never refuse a request to volunteer for any task, no matter how odious, for the next twelve months. Good resolution, it turns out. It was a busy year, a surprising year, and a year in which I made several new friends. It was also a year in which I reminded myself why volunteering at my children’s grade school made my armpits itch, but that’s another story. On December 28 of that year, I met a friend for coffee and she arm-twisted me into joining a board of directors to a non-profit group to which we both belonged. I felt like asking her, “Couldn’t you have waited four days to ask me, when I’d be knee-deep in cigarette cartons, plowing through my next year’s resolution?” But I accepted, and, honestly, I can’t say I’m any the worse for wear.

Last year, I determined to master bakasana, or crow pose, in yoga. As a marginally adequate but enthusiastic yogi, I have progressed enough in seven years to refrain from falling over whenever we have to stand on one leg, but I lack the arm strength, confidence and inner peace to manage even the most rudimentary arm balance. Last January, it seemed suddenly possible. When the teacher would announce time for crow, I’d think, “Today’s the day.”

Resolution Update: It’s December. No crow. I’ve rediscovered the fact that, in addition to moving too rapidly downhill or operating heavy machinery, I really hate to teeter. I would rather stay put, always. This, in fact, is why I like yoga in the first place. Bare feet, firm ground, and I’m not going anywhere. If you think I’ve missed the significance of this as a metaphor for my own pathetic life, I haven’t. And I can’t even step into the smoking lounge to forget about my failure.

I did master something else this year. It became one of those mid-year resolutions that I allow into the mix when it seems as if the main resolution is already a lost cause. And it started because I was desperate when my Tuesday – Thursday yoga teacher quit. Since I had become, then as now, TPFSY (Too Poor for Studio Yoga), I had to find an acceptable substitute within the YMCA system, and the pickings, let us say diplomatically, were slim. I pined for Stephanie, my Tuesday/Thursday guru. Finally, emboldened, I decided to take a class That Was Not Yoga. This was a huge step for a woman who loves standing still on a mat. I laced up my sneakers and went to Wendy’s Zumba class. Ay caramba. It was as if the top of my chakra-aligned head had been peeled open, and a freshly mixed blender of frozen margaritas poured inside. Zumba is everything yoga is not. It’s fast and loud and crazy. I loved it, even though a glance in the class mirrors told me that the memory of Gwen Verdon could rest safely for the nonce.

So what if I danced like someone who had been living in Minnesota for sixteen years? It was almost as much fun as I might have had smoking, or doing crow pose, or doing crow pose while smoking.

I started bringing my daughters, then their friends, to class, and we took over whole corners of the studio with our enthusiastic gyrations. My youngest girl is a great dancer, and I couldn’t help but admire how this innocent little pre-teen could shimmy. Her shoulders never stopped shaking what the good Lord gave her, and then some. I, in contrast, had stiff, intractable shoulders that moved with all the grace and flexibility of a couple of bulldozers.

I resolved, mid-June, to perfect my shimmy. I watched my daughter carefully. I asked for pointers. I broke down the steps and moved very slowly at first, and then I built up steam.

And you know what? I’m not half bad. It’s not Marilyn Monroe in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.” It’s not even a sidekick shimmy such as Jane Russell might manage. But it’s me -- moving off my mat and shaking things up. And that might be the best resolution I’ve made – and kept – in a long time.