Irish writer Marian Keyes is excellent at writing pieces that 'speak' directly to the reader. She has a wonderfully informal style and her personality leaps off the page at you. You can almost hear what she must sound like when you read her work. And wonderfully, from my point of view, she manages to do all that without cursing, so I can upload it without editing. All of these things help to create a memorable and enjoyable 'article for a light-hearted magazine' - yes, that question...
Savasanas, Padmasanas and Pranayamas… Oh My!
Did I ever tell you about the time I decided to become a yoga instructor? Only a couple of years ago, it was.
Well, like all women of my age, I’d ‘dabbled’ over the years, I’d done my fair share of ‘experimenting.’ Yoga used to be a thing that only hippies did, but about 15 years ago a new mutated version of yoga started doing the rounds. This yoga wasn’t an adjunct to meditation but a new way to get hard-bodied. It was cripplingly difficult. So difficult that it was okay for even rugby and GAA players to do it. (Although I believe they’ve stopped now.)
This new yoga pretended to be ‘spiritual’ like the old yoga and every class would begin with a wafty speech from the instructor about how you should listen to your body and how you shouldn’t be in competition with anyone around you and it was ‘your practice’ and no-one else’s and everyone would nod in agreement. But in reality I found it horribly competitive and there were times when I’d be holding a pose and the sweat would be pouring off me and I’d feel like I was going to die but I was damned if I was going to give my screaming muscles a break and topple onto the floor and let the girl beside me with the fake-serene look on her face snicker up her sleeve.
People – oh, they can deny it all they like but it’s true – were even competitive about their mats: every now and again someone would show up with a springy new mat in a beautiful colour that you couldn’t get in Ireland and they’d be swanking around, acting all “Oh this old thing?” about it and everyone would be sickened with jealousy and stare at their curly-edged old blue mat with hatred but then they had to get all spiritual and ‘rise above it.’
I hated yoga. In fairness, I hated all exercise but regarded it as a necessary evil. Yoga, however, was the most awful – I think it was the cod-spirituality that made it difficult to stomach. A spinning class might be hell, but at least no-one makes you think positive thoughts about people you dislike – you think about your thighs and that’s all.
So with yoga, I’d go for a while, then I’d stop. Then I’d read another article about how yoga builds core strength and gives you lovely long lean muscles and gives you peace-of-mind into the bargain and I’d start up again for a while, but always lapse.
I never got the serenity that people talked about. Then three years ago I had a breakdown and in all the flailing around, looking for a lifebuoy, I somehow started doing yoga again and to my great surprise I’d get moments at the end of a class, when my tormented head would settle down and I’d have a brief spell of feeling like I could cope.
Yoga, I decided, was the answer. Yoga would save me. Yoga would give me a new life. I couldn’t write and I needed a job so why not become a yoga instructor?! I had great plans: I’d open each class with beautiful inspirational readings; at the end I’d talk people through glorious visualisations and I’d cover them with pink cashmere throws – I spent the best part of a day on the Designer’s Guild site trying to decide which blankets to buy. I wondered about venues. And how much I should charge people. And other mad stuff.
Then I found a yoga school! Over the course of a year I’d do 12 weekends of practical and theoretical yoga and at the end I’d do an exam and assuming I passed, then I’d be a yoga instructor. Earnestly, I began my ‘study.’ I bought a fabulous jealous-making purple mat. And a notebook. But there was one thing I hadn’t factored into the equation – I didn’t look like a yoga instructor. Yoga instructors are lean and long and lithe and limber and lissom. They can do headstands and handstands and itch their eye with their big toe and if they aren’t born that way, they get that way by starting to practice yoga at a young age and doing it all day, every day.
I was the wrong side of 45. Throughout my life I’d exercised sporadically at best. I was short and stout and my joints had already started to seize up – my right hip was gammy and my right knee was banjaxed.
Worst of all, I had the wrong kind of feet. Yoga instructors’ feet are as soft and pink as a baby’s cheek. My feet look like the Burren – my soles are insulated with layer upon layer of grey stoney stuff. I went to a woman who promised to burn off the limestone, which she duly did, but the skin underneath was a startlingly bright yellow. It was hopeless, hopeless.
… to be honest, by then I was losing interest. It was too hard – I was expected to do a yoga class every day. And there were too many Sanskrit words to remember – Savasanas and Padmasanas and Pranayamas. Reluctantly I admitted to myself that I’d have to find salvation and a new career elsewhere and after the second training weekend, I tiptoed quietly away, leaving my good purple mat behind.
- Marian Keyes
(Lifted from the Easons website)
Savasanas, Padmasanas and Pranayamas… Oh My!
Did I ever tell you about the time I decided to become a yoga instructor? Only a couple of years ago, it was.
Well, like all women of my age, I’d ‘dabbled’ over the years, I’d done my fair share of ‘experimenting.’ Yoga used to be a thing that only hippies did, but about 15 years ago a new mutated version of yoga started doing the rounds. This yoga wasn’t an adjunct to meditation but a new way to get hard-bodied. It was cripplingly difficult. So difficult that it was okay for even rugby and GAA players to do it. (Although I believe they’ve stopped now.)
This new yoga pretended to be ‘spiritual’ like the old yoga and every class would begin with a wafty speech from the instructor about how you should listen to your body and how you shouldn’t be in competition with anyone around you and it was ‘your practice’ and no-one else’s and everyone would nod in agreement. But in reality I found it horribly competitive and there were times when I’d be holding a pose and the sweat would be pouring off me and I’d feel like I was going to die but I was damned if I was going to give my screaming muscles a break and topple onto the floor and let the girl beside me with the fake-serene look on her face snicker up her sleeve.
People – oh, they can deny it all they like but it’s true – were even competitive about their mats: every now and again someone would show up with a springy new mat in a beautiful colour that you couldn’t get in Ireland and they’d be swanking around, acting all “Oh this old thing?” about it and everyone would be sickened with jealousy and stare at their curly-edged old blue mat with hatred but then they had to get all spiritual and ‘rise above it.’
I hated yoga. In fairness, I hated all exercise but regarded it as a necessary evil. Yoga, however, was the most awful – I think it was the cod-spirituality that made it difficult to stomach. A spinning class might be hell, but at least no-one makes you think positive thoughts about people you dislike – you think about your thighs and that’s all.
So with yoga, I’d go for a while, then I’d stop. Then I’d read another article about how yoga builds core strength and gives you lovely long lean muscles and gives you peace-of-mind into the bargain and I’d start up again for a while, but always lapse.
I never got the serenity that people talked about. Then three years ago I had a breakdown and in all the flailing around, looking for a lifebuoy, I somehow started doing yoga again and to my great surprise I’d get moments at the end of a class, when my tormented head would settle down and I’d have a brief spell of feeling like I could cope.
Yoga, I decided, was the answer. Yoga would save me. Yoga would give me a new life. I couldn’t write and I needed a job so why not become a yoga instructor?! I had great plans: I’d open each class with beautiful inspirational readings; at the end I’d talk people through glorious visualisations and I’d cover them with pink cashmere throws – I spent the best part of a day on the Designer’s Guild site trying to decide which blankets to buy. I wondered about venues. And how much I should charge people. And other mad stuff.
Then I found a yoga school! Over the course of a year I’d do 12 weekends of practical and theoretical yoga and at the end I’d do an exam and assuming I passed, then I’d be a yoga instructor. Earnestly, I began my ‘study.’ I bought a fabulous jealous-making purple mat. And a notebook. But there was one thing I hadn’t factored into the equation – I didn’t look like a yoga instructor. Yoga instructors are lean and long and lithe and limber and lissom. They can do headstands and handstands and itch their eye with their big toe and if they aren’t born that way, they get that way by starting to practice yoga at a young age and doing it all day, every day.
I was the wrong side of 45. Throughout my life I’d exercised sporadically at best. I was short and stout and my joints had already started to seize up – my right hip was gammy and my right knee was banjaxed.
Worst of all, I had the wrong kind of feet. Yoga instructors’ feet are as soft and pink as a baby’s cheek. My feet look like the Burren – my soles are insulated with layer upon layer of grey stoney stuff. I went to a woman who promised to burn off the limestone, which she duly did, but the skin underneath was a startlingly bright yellow. It was hopeless, hopeless.
… to be honest, by then I was losing interest. It was too hard – I was expected to do a yoga class every day. And there were too many Sanskrit words to remember – Savasanas and Padmasanas and Pranayamas. Reluctantly I admitted to myself that I’d have to find salvation and a new career elsewhere and after the second training weekend, I tiptoed quietly away, leaving my good purple mat behind.
- Marian Keyes
(Lifted from the Easons website)