The Fat Bloke Diaries

Episode Twenty-Eight – Bend It Like Maya

I never understood how constellations in the sky got their names. Was there some ancient Greek enjoying a spliff with a friend one dark and moonless night, gazing into the sky at a random group of stars who said “Look, the stars make patterns. I can see a box, and there’s a cross. What can you see?” to which his friend replied, “I can see a mighty hunter with an animal skin thrown casually over one arm and a club in the other, and he’s got a huge sword dangling from a thong on his belt.”

There must have been some kind of mind-expansion going on because, being clean and sober; I certainly can’t make some of them out.

I have the same blindness when I try to get my head around some of the names given to yoga positions. A few of them make perfect sense, like the cobra pose for example. I can see how, by lying flat on my belly and arching my back, I could be doing an impression of a very large but incredibly slow striking cobra. But others? How in the holy tantric name of Sting am I to strike a pigeon pose? And why do they all seem to be named after animals? I don’t know about your neck of the woods, but we don’t get many monkeys, crocodiles or camels in the wilds of Barnsley. We’d be much more likely to name them after things like burning car or shopping trolley. We do however see a few representatives of the one yoga position that I’m comfortable with: the corpse.

That’s the one where you lie still and pretend to be dead while someone gently says “now make yourself as long as possible”. Oh, if only this were an 18 rated column. I could work an entire comedy routine out of this.

I managed the Tree position quite well too, although my version was not so much firmly grounded as swaying in a force seven gale. And there was no way that I could get my heel up to my grow-in (as Granny so wonderfully used to put it) as required. I managed to place it as high as my standing knee and there it stayed. But apart from my total lack of balance and my terrible form, I held the pose just like the teacher showed me.

Ah, the teacher. Mine is the ultra-hyper Maya (the female trainer from My Fitness Coach on my Wii). She has no concept of yoga as relaxation. Obviously, being a virtual trainer, she has no concept of anything, but she certainly doesn’t cut back on the work-out part of the stretching and bending. After an hour-long gentle session with her I was creating my own new position. I lay on my side with my arms and legs outstretched, struggling for breath. I call it the Dying Dog.

I’ll have a go at most of the physical shapes that she demands of me, but don’t expect me to get involved in yoga’s mental and spiritual disciplines though. I’m far too busy trying not to fall over to meditate.

You’ll no doubt gather from all this that my British Heart Foundation-endorsed training plan has me doing lots of yoga and stretching this week alongside the more energetic stuff. That seems sensible enough; they don’t want me damaging myself before I get the chance to raise them some money. So instead of watching repeats of Doctor Who, my TV tonight is showing Yoga With Maya.

This is a good thing. I know that I don’t do enough stretching. When I get back in from a run it’s usually all I can do to breathe, let alone stretch. A few wall pushes and heel pull-ups and that’s normally it for me, but I haven’t heard anything in my leg go ‘twang!’ yet, so I can’t be doing too much wrong. I read – and it was on the internet, so it must be true – that I should stretch for up to half an hour when I return home, but it never happens. I’m also lax when it comes to warming up and down too. That should be another ten minutes on both the start and end of my session apparently. Add all that lot together and it’s a full episode of the Doctor blowing some Daleks up that I’d be missing. And it would probably be one that I’ve only seen thrice.

Maybe I should ask my Beloved to give my legs a massage when I get home. That might be nice. That might be very nice indeed.

Now there’s a thought that I really could meditate on.

© 2009 Shaun Finnie
 

Back to Index