By Mickey Friedman
February 12, 2015
You know you’re headed for your last rodeo when you can remember a time before yoga. I see the barber shops on Railroad Street, two saloons and the car parts store. The donut shop that turned into the falafel place that is now Martin’s. And the jewelry stores here in The Best Small Town in America.
There’s A&P and Aldo’s. But not a single yoga studio.
Yet nowadays people are either headed to yoga or on their way back.
I don’t do yoga because I don’t like to cry in public. A hold-over from being a kid in the Bronx. If you cried on the street you’d be tackled and pummeled and tears would be the least of your problems.
So you cried in private.
Sadly my body can’t do what you’re supposed to do in yoga. I once got some DVDs with this blond yoga goddess who without effort twisted and turned in wondrous ways by her California pool. I tried to mimic her on my dusty floor in your basic lotus and everything hurt.
I’m sure you’ve got problems of your own but let me tell you it’s not easy being the only one at the coffee shop who doesn’t do yoga. You don’t smile as much as they do. And your neck hurts more than theirs.
Which leads to the next problem. Everyone who does yoga knows a good masseuse and a better healer.
And should you, in an uncharacteristic moment of weakness, complain about your neck which won’t go either left or right or up or down, they, the folks who obviously care more about their body than you care about yours, otherwise they would have seen you at yoga, well they recommend Edith Elizabeth Schmidlap with the magic hands. Or if Edith is too busy, which she most likely is, there’s always Angelique who has these bars on the ceiling that she hangs from while she stretches out your too tight back with her talented toes.
These suggestions come from very good people motivated by a sincere desire to have you join them. Because life really is so much better when you can get your knees to touch that dusty floor, your back erect, your breathing slowed, a small but noticeable smile ready to reveal itself. Problem is to get there I’d have to do an awful lot of crying in public.
Since we’re sharing I have, in fact, been to a couple of massage therapists. One at the Hilton in San Juan, lying under a tropical tree, warm and vulnerable, dreaming of the bing-bing-bing of the slot machine, dollars tumbling toward me, lights flashing when Ms. Massage Therapist announces to the entire beach: “You have the tightest neck I have ever seen. How could you let it get this way? You shouldn’t have let this happen, you know?” And all of a sudden the bing-bing-bing changed to uh-oh, the lights dimmed and those dollars looked at me and headed back up the slot machine, never to be seen again.
Back home I found Laura, as much a muscle miracle worker as masseuse, compassionate and tolerant of my deep failings, but then she moved to Florida. God might work in mysterious ways but my neck still doesn’t.
So I’ve often dreamt of finding another, easier way to health, physical and spiritual. There’s Tibetan Buddhist Chanting every other Tuesday at The Methodist Church but I’m a lousy chanter. There’s something about having to chant exactly what everyone else is chanting which reminds me of North Korea. And that picture doesn’t promote inner peace.
There’s “See Your Soul-Center” at the Yuri Dimitri “See Your Soul-Center” Center on South Main, a twenty-six week intense intensive dedicated to spiritual re-alignment. “We displace the dark and re-invigorate the light within,” Manny Montanari writes. And he ought to know, having completed the trademarked two year’s Yuri Dimitri training at “See Your Soul-Center” Central in LA. Which probably works for most but after three decades editing film and video with the lights off and shades drawn, I’ve come to love the dark.
And last but not least, “Live Like A Leopard” which combines the deeply spiritual secrets of the sub-Sahara with contemporary day-trading. “We’ll fly to the grasslands of Africa where we’ll learn the ways of the leopard,” Miranda Peacock promises. “We’ll sprint through the bush. We’ll drop from the trees. And like the crafty leopard, we’ll trade by night, pouncing upon little known but oh so promising unsuspecting stocks. There’s money to be made.” Which would be perfect if I didn’t have a crippling fear of flying and wasn’t convinced cats are out to get me.
Luckily I know I’m still breathing because I can remember a time before yoga.
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The author wants you to know that no yoga practitioners or leopards were hurt, no major religions damaged, or any cartoonists killed in the production of this column.