So, this is the week that there are a limited number of yoga classes at the studio while Robin is in Vermont at a teacher training with David Swenson. While I'll still be attending a few classes at the studio taught by some of the new teachers (yay!), my original plan was to travel around to some other studios and experience yoga in a new place taught by more new voices.
Well, financially, that plan isn't going to work out this week. While I'm a little bummed out that my finances won't allow me to travel this week, I've turned my attention to using this week to starting a home practice.
Now, it's easy for me to do yoga at the studio. Probably for anyone else, too. You get there, you arrive, you change into your yoga clothes, unroll your mat, and you're there. Not quite the same at home, where there's a five-year-old clamoring for attention, telephones ringing, visitors dropping by, dirty dishes and laundry to do, housecleaning, a 103-lb dog who wants to lie across the middle of your mat...
You get the idea.
The first hurdle that I have to overcome in establishing my home practice is finding a space to practice.
We live in a tiny house. I mean, tiny. The top floor is about 1,000 square feet, and while we have a semi-finished basement, it's always chilly down there, and the ceilings are so low that I can't raise my hands above my head.
We have a lovely back porch, which is a little on the small side, but still great for the summer and warmer days, but in the winter (which is 7 months out of the year), it's just not practical. No heat, and the temperature out there averages around 20 degrees F.
Okay, that leaves the kitchen (which is also usually pretty chilly, since we don't heat it when we have the wood stove burning), and the living room.
The living room is tiny, but a nice place to practice. As long as we don't have the clothes set out drying on the drying rack (we don't have a clothes dryer), and as long as the Christmas tree isn't up, and as long as Colden doesn't have his train tracks set out on the rug in the middle of the floor...
Do you see my problem here?
The bedrooms are too small - there's absolutely no room for me to spread out my mat in either of them. The dining room might work, since it's warm and the ceilings are higher than the basement and living room, but we have an enormous dining room table that takes up the whole space.
So what's a yogi momma to do? I'm just going to have to do some creative furniture arranging before I practice, I think.
The second hurdle is finding the time to practice, especially on the weekends.
Weekends around here are packed. We're trying to get caught up on housework, cook a few good meals, maybe take some time to spend together as a family and go to the Wild Center, or the VIC to go birding or for a hike, or take the canoe out for a paddle... There's grocery shopping to do be done, gardens that need tending, play dates, meals with family...
I usually go to a Sunday afternoon yoga class, but that's at the studio, and I leave the house so I can get some peace and quiet. If I tried to do an hour of yoga on the back porch at 4 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon at home? Yeah. I'd probably get 15 minutes in, and then Colden would come and want to talk or tell me to come play with him, and Moose would plop down in the center of my yoga mat, and our friends would stop by... It's like Grand Central Station here when everybody is at home.
My only options, it seems, will be to get up earlier than everyone else, which means waking up around 5 a.m., or doing yoga after everyone has gone to bed, around 8:30 at night. Neither one seems terribly attractive, but the early waking might be the best option for me.
Now, I just need to get an alarm clock...
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