I inhale, I exhale...

So it's my 20th day of yoga and I'm in the zone. Well, at least I have been for the last couple of days. I'm matching my breath to my movements and my movements to my breath and I've been mildly successful at tuning out my to-do lists and my dinner plans and the whole slew of other things that creep into my brain that I don't want to think about-- in yoga or ever. I even thought to myself the other day-- what am I going to do without yoga when I am not doing it every day!?!?! Maybe it's having an affect on me after all!

Unfortunately, today was different. Today, there was a man next to me who was also breathing with his movements, not really a shocker since that is the point of yoga, but he was loud. Very loud. Think of someone breathing loudly and up it by about 10. It was ridiculous, and... sort of sexual. It totally creeped. me. out. No matter what I did I could not push him out of my head. Sure, he was practically on top of me since the class was so full, but aside from that, come on... do you not know that you are breathing 5 times louder than anyone in the class? I couldn't even hear my own breath. Anyway, needless to say, yoga was not relaxing today. I actually found myself getting really irritated, which obviously defeats the point of yoga in the first place. Not to mention, I tried the crow pose that I've talked about in a previous post and I totally wiped out, hard. It was sort of embarrassing and my knee is not very happy with me right now on account of the towel burn it suffered.

So at the end of class, I asked my teacher if she had any tips-- not for the crow pose but for tuning people out, and she said, just go back to your breath. Not a bad mantra for life. Maybe I should use it on a regular basis-- actually, I can think of a few clients that I should be doing it with right now (so as to diminish the desire to want to rip their heads off.)

I inhale, I exhale....