Adventures in Adventuring

Confession:  I skipped FHE again.  

Justification:  I skipped FHE for awesomeness and adventure.  

   

Some time ago, I learned that the Lotus Temple in Spanish Fork offers free yoga classes and meditation on Monday and Thursday nights.  I was immediately interested.  I would like to try yoga, and I like free, and I've liked every devotee to Krishna I've met.  I let the idea roll around for a few weeks while I thought about it.  Then my car broke, and it seemed like I'd never go anywhere that far away on a week night ever again.

   

But I didn't count on the addiction of exercise.  I'm not someone who has ever had the self-discipline to exercise on my own.  I always enjoy exercise, be it running, skiing, hiking, biking, pilates, lifting weights, or anything else, but I have never had the self-control or self-motivation necessary to make it part of my life.  This year of teaching has been one of the most sedentary of my life.  I would go weeks without even walking a mile at once.  Then I made the decision to go car free (see previous posts), and my life began to change.  I now walk a mile every weekday morning and afternoon.  I walk or bike to the grocery store and anywhere else I care to go.  And those walks and bike rides are turning into my favorite parts of each day.  Each day they go by more quickly and more easily, and I feel healthier, happier, and more motivated to do just about everything.  

    

Sunday I went on a 9 mile bike-ride just for fun before the morning Conference session.  As I sat by the side of Utah Lake watching the sun come out from behind the mountains and listening to birds sing, and as I biked through the wooded trail by the river back to my apartment, I thought to my self, "Heck yes. More of this kind of thing WILL happen in my life."

   

So yesterday morning I investigated bus schedules to see if there was anyway I could make yoga classes possible.  Starting in my dress clothes 20 minutes from the nearest bus stop in Lehi at 3:30, could I make it to 8000 South Spanish Fork in my work-out clothes by 6:30?  Then, after the class, could I catch the last of the night back to Provo in time?  The answers to all of those questions turned out to be yes.  Except for the last one.  As I sprinted toward the bus stop (after walking and jogging about two miles from the Lotus Temple along the side of a highway after dark) I watched the last bus leave me behind.  So, I stood on a street corner in Spanish Fork and sang songs to myself while my wonderful, kind, and caring roommate came to my rescue.  Defeated but defiant, when I got home I opened up google maps and switched to street view.  Click-by-click, I began to scout for bus stops.  After ten minutes or so, I found it!  A closer bus stop to the south of the temple!  A-ha!  I should now only have a 10-20 minute walk to and from the temple.  

   

Yoga will happen again.  I loved it.  I sat in a big open room made of beautiful marble and smelling faintly of incense and took deep breaths and stretched slowly as the sunset streamed through the many windows and the parrots on the floor below whistled and called to each other.  I stretched muscles I didn't know I had, and got a glimpse of the kind of strength, flexibility, and balance possible through regular practice.  I didn't worry about where I would teach next year, how the economy was doing, or what I would do with my summer.  And afterward, I felt great.  The instructor did put in clear but tactful plugs for vegetarianism and the spiritual aspect of yoga, but I'm not opposed to either of those.  The end of the session always includes chanting, which I'm a little less excited about, if only because I don't like chanting the name of someone else's deity 108 times.   But on the whole, it was wonderful, challenging, and relaxing.