The Fateful Sneeze

I am still going to yoga sometimes. I still think the first 30 minutes are very hard. Like, every week I can't believe it has only been 30 minutes. But then at about 40 minutes I get a fun little brain buzz. I am  also noticing small improvements in my flexibility, especially when I touch my toes, and I think maybe my arms/shoulders are more defined. Maybe? If the light is just right and I hold it like this.  My happy baby pose is more like a shaky dying grasshopper. My dead bug is more like a tipsy tree. Pretty much anything that requires me grabbing my feet while lying on my back is not what the yogi masters had in mind.

What is most surprising about yoga is my yoga injuries. I currently have three.

1. My right wrist feels pressure when I do high plank. I try to make my fingers long and strong like Alex tells me to. Alex is my tall, blond, always painted fingernails teacher. Her fingernails are so bright and perfect. She says,"Keep your fingers long and strong and press into the webbing of your hand if you feel pressure in your wrists." I try to do it. My wrist still hurts. So there's that.

2. I scratched my own ankle with my own toe nail. Opposite feet, people. It (the injured ankle) bled, during class, and then it hurt for days. I felt kind of stupid about that one. But, only because it was kind of stupid.

3. But, the stupid I felt from injury number two was nothing compared to the stupid on injury number three. There I was, the end of class. We had already done all the sun poses. I felt very powerful with my awesome horse stance. I wasn't surprised that I was so good at being a horse. John Bennion knew I was a horse years ago. Anyway, he was right again. Well, there I was strengthening my back line, or something like that. We were being supermen with our fluttering arms and fluttering legs all at the same time. Then it happened. I sneezed.

Sneezing is one of those wonderful things that people get to do. It is refreshing, it is surprising, and it makes us feel surprisingly accomplished at that thing we just did with no conscious thought. This sneeze started like many other sneezes-with that tickle in my nose. And then I knew I was going to sneeze, but I wasn't sure when, but then I sneezed right away. Like I knew I was going to, and then it happened practically in the same instant. Arms still fluttering away straight ahead. Well, the thing is that my head was off the yoga matt a little bit. When the sneeze happened my left-eyebrow part of my head hit the hard tile floor. Bam. I did not feel like a super-hero.

Guys, don't worry, I survived. My eye was just a little bit bruised. But would you believe, not one person in the whole room said, "Bless you? or "gesundheit" or whatever the Nebraska variation is?

Not one. I guess when one lives in Nebraska, there is no need for such silly traditions. Or maybe it is that in yoga, we put on hold all "bless you's" out of respect for the divine teachers in all of us. Maybe that's what it is.

Well, may your happy babies be far more flexible and well-balanced than mine. Namaste.