When a friend invited me to online yoga and meditation amidst the global pandemic, I decided sure. He hosts a Saturday yoga class at a park spring thru fall, as other classes throughout the week. While we live a few states apart, I had the chance to attend a Saturday class last summer and enjoyed doing yoga in a beautiful place. That was the first in-person yoga classes I attended four months after surgery.
When in-person gatherings ended to prevent the spread of COVID-19, he decided to hold the classes online via Zoom to maintain the community and connection. Despite being hundreds of miles away, I’m now able to attend these daily yoga and meditation times. Knowing there are others practicing together, even if we are all sitting in silence during meditation, holds us accountable to one another. It’s a nice way to be together while we’re apart. I’ve been working on incorporating meditation and exercise into my daily routine and this has reinforced that practice.
During this morning’s yoga session, we did 108 bends. Okay, so I don’t recall the name of the pose…it wasn’t a sun salutation, but we started in mountain, got into chair, got into table, then into child’s pose, then reversed it back up. One of the yoga studios in the area does something like this with 108 sun salutations on the first day of summer, so I pondered the meaning of 108.
Honestly, completing these early morning bends was probably the most strenuous, repetitive thing I have done in a long time.
Mountain, chair, table, child, table, chair, mountain.
A little ways in, I realized – oh, he was serious. We’re actually doing 108 of these.
At one point I laughed, asking if someone else was counting because I sure wasn’t. Thankfully, someone else was.
Once we all established what number we were all on, we refocused and got to it. We fell into a rhythm – mountain, chair, table, child, table, chair mountain.
Somewhere in this time, I noticed the morning chill was gone, even though the sun had not fully risen.
Mountain, chair, table, child, table, chair, mountain.
Whoa, my legs are feeling it.
Mountain, chair, table, child, table, chair, mountain.
Then I noticed the morning chill was gone, so I doffed my sweatshirt. Oh wait, now I am one count behind everyone else.
Mountain, chair, table, child, table, chair, mountain.
This is getting hard.
Mountain, chair, table, child, table, chair, mountain.
Are we there yet?
Mountain, chair, table, child, table, chair, mountain.
Then I realized, this is like the phases of quarantine.
Mountain, chair, table, child, table, chair, mountain.
And just like that, it was done. We did it. It was hard, but we did it.
As we enter week five of staying at home and avoiding non-essential trips, we’re still not sure when this will end. But, just like those bends, we have to keep doing what we’re doing so we can come out on the other side of the coronavirus curve with as few cases and deaths as possible.
