So here’s the deal. I don’t know how I’m going to get it together every day to get the studio practices, home practices and meditation all in. Panic sets in and I try to remember to breathe. I’m just trying to keep it together right now. I start questioning whether I’m just too busy to be a part of this and then I realize I’m playing the “Busy Game.” A lot of people play it. It’s as though our culture doesn’t value you unless you appear to be very, very busy, so we make a big drama about how busy our lives are and we can’t fit one more thing in them.

I go to parties where it feels like all we do is try to one-up each other. It’s exhausting and so stressful. When I think about it, though, I say I don’t have time to do yoga at home or meditate, etc., but that’s not really true. It’s just that I haven’t made it a priority. Why is it I have plenty of time to devote to ‘CSI Miami?’ The top-notch acting? Really, now. Today, with a little wrangling, I was able to get to the noon class, which included the meditation I needed (sweet). I had to ask my friend Walker Baggage for help picking up RJ from school and dropping him off at the apartment. I hate asking for help. It makes me feel weak and vulnerable. But I don’t have a choice, and Walker seems more than willing to do it. I offer dinner at Copper; she accepts. 

When I get to the class, I feel hot and nervous. There are 4 assistants and one teacher, Steve, in the class. We start out and do our “Ohms” together and Steve begins the class. I’m expecting Steve to get all Zen on us and do the poses in front of us, but he doesn’t. Steve talks casually, almost conversationally, about the poses we’re trying (which is both comforting and weird). I laugh to myself because he sort of sounds like a gynecologist I once had who would ask me these inane questions while giving a Pap smear and I would be sitting there thinking, “I’m really in pain and I know you’re trying to get me to relax …but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m in stirrups and wearing a paper gown.” It’s sort of the same thing, but without the stirrups.  The assistants walk around and readjust our poses and quietly explain how to move, change arm position, make sure we are in alignment etc. This makes me really uncomfortable. I want to fly under the radar, look like I know what I’m doing, and it’s so obvious I don’t. The assistants are touching me and I’m sweating all over the place and I just feel like I want to cry. The logical part of my brain tells me they’re just showing me the proper way to do Downward Dog, but the emotional part tells me I’m failing. This is so unexpected. I keep reminding myself: “Dude, its just yoga. Don’t be a freak.” At the end of the class, I feel satisfied but somewhat defeated because I’m a beginner, a freshman, a greenhorn. Steve said that yoga is a 70-year practice and when we think about it that way, we’re all beginners…a concept so hard to accept for someone playing the busy game. Peace, Sheri

~ Sheri Joseph