The day started as usual. My son, J woke up and climbed into his parent’s bed ready to watch his morning shows. I lean in for our morning snuggle to instead be greeted by a morning sneeze.
“Uuuugggghhhhh!” Being sneezed on any time of the day is the pits but first thing in the morning? I’ll let you fill in the rest. I had to cut the snuggle short to run screaming from the bed to the bathroom to get this smell off of me. I washed my face, neck, behind my ears. I still smell. I can’t find the smell. Where is it coming from? The only cure for this is a shower and I have no time before the sprint of preschool prep and drop off and zoom to yoga. I debate skipping yoga, I can’t practice so close to all the ladies smelling like sneeze! But I have to go. My holiday hiatus has made me in dire need of some zen. Ok, I will go and sit in the back of class, hopefully it wont be too crowded…
I, of course, walk into the most crowded class ever with a minute before start.
“Hi Stacey. Take the last spot up front between Sheila and Christopher… Christopher? Who the hell is Christopher and why is he in this class? (It turns out Christopher is the perfectly chiseled son of a longtime yogi who is home from college for the holidays and he is in this class because God thought it would be funny.) I can’t believe it. I smell like sneeze and have to practice six inches away from this Adonis of a young man. I am a happily married woman but I do have the wherewithal to appreciate God’s handiwork.
My practice goes ok for a while but I get a whiff of the sneeze now and then and now I am convinced everyone around me smells the sneeze too. My only reprieve is the smell of garlic from someone else’s dinner last night. Although now does everyone think I smell like sneeze and garlic? Yikes. I just want to get through this class and go through my day checking off my to-do list as the enlightened soul I think I am.
A little more time and a few more poses pass when words are uttered few want to hear:
“Stick your butt out.” For some reason, in yoga to get the proper alignment of form and function in so many standing poses, one must “stick your butt out.” That is usually no big deal when you are among friends and fellow yogis but today was not that day. I did what I could to follow direction but apparently not enough because I soon heard:
“Stick your butt out even more!” from our teacher who is either so enlightened that she doesn’t see the embarrassment of it all or does see it and agrees this is the stuff blog posts are made of.
So now I have this perfectly sculpted college kid with his perfectly coiffed head four inches from my nether yea and my teacher wants me to stick my butt out more? Kill me now! I did what any other happily married woman smelling like her son’s morning sneeze would do…I collapsed into the safety of Child’s Pose. All I have to do is breath…Seriously where is that smell coming from? It has to be my hair.
Shavasana doesn’t come soon enough. I Namaste myself out of there and hightail it home to hit the showers and get put back together before pickup.
I can always count on yoga to be a practice in so many wonderful experiences, one of which being humility. That is a really great thing because we all need humility to keep us grounded, especially after the craziness of the holiday season. To be able to laugh at yourself in the face of truly awkward situations with better-looking, younger people than you, that is a gift that keeps on giving!
Happy New Year All! ~StaceyLu
