Yoga Chickie: Now Using Solar Power

Seriously. I'm greening my yoga practice. I'm going to take what was a horrendous uninspired cold-assed winter and turn it into a concept. From here on in, when the weather is cold and my joints ache, I am not going to try to do my practice at all, BUT every day that the sun is shining and the temperature hits 70 degrees farenheit, I will get on my mat...outside.

All through this dismal winter and spring, I dragged my achey, arthritic joints through agonizing practices by turning on the space heater and upping the thermostat to upwards of 80 degrees. Sometimes I used the wood fireplace. None of those methods is helpful to my home's carbon footprint. In fact, they all suck pretty much. And I'm just talking about impact on the environment. As far as yoga practice goes, they pretty much suck too. Wood burning fire sends ashes out to greet the lungs. The space heater is cacophonous and smells sort of weird. And turning the thermostat up doesn't make it feel the "right" kind of warm. It just feels kind of like the walls are closing in.

Sure, not all my winter practices were awful. Some were even quite nice. But for the most part, it reminded me of trying to jog while pregnant. It just didn't feel right. And I knew that if I tried to keep it up, it would only spoil it for me afterwards. I figured that if I gave myself a break while the circumstances were less than decent, then I would return with that gung ho fervor that relish. And so it came to pass.

Now, way late into the spring season, the sun may actually be doing what we expect it to do, which is to say, warming the earth. The mushrooms growing all over my woodlands will be a bit miffed, I am sure. But whatever. They're poisonous anyway. Not that there's anything wrong with being poisonous, in and of itself, to wit, Foxglove (also known as Digitalis, also known as the source of a highly toxic substance used to make a highly potent heart medication).

But I digress.

And it's a beautiful thing. Me, jabbering away on my blog. Sure, you may not think so. But I feel good again, thanks to a delightful two hour practice in the sun on my back porch, and I might as well say it here.

YC