Yummmmmm

(ed note: i wrote this maybe four weeks ago in shanghai in preparation for a trip to the land of internet freedom where it could be published. i am now in that land. )

I’m not going to lie to you, dear Reader of the Yogery. It’s five o’clock in the evening, and my boyfriend has a cocktail business function and won’t be home until late. I'm on my own. What I want to do is go down to the Family Mart on the corner, buy a big Suntory beer, watch the rest of Happy-Go-Lucky and troll around the interwebs for pictures of celebrities in bad outfits. (ed note: www.gofugyourself.com. yes! i did it! i went there! it was awesome!)

But NO. NO! I must practice yoga. MUST DO IT. I’ve been so lazy lately, and by lazy I mean sick, and by sick I mean, lazy.

Full disclosure: I just baked banana nut muffins. Not even from scratch. Betty Crocker, reader, BETTY CROCKER! Fuller disclosure: I’ve been craving banana nut bread/muffin/pancakes. The cost of the ingredients for said baked goods in China greatly outweighs the cost of one packet of “just add water” B. Crocker mix. So, not entirely lazy. But I sure do want to eat them RIGHT NOW. With butter.

I’m unemployed here in Shanghai. No private classes, no studio classes. There’ve been a few false alarms and false starts, but nothing substantial. And I guess it’s a good thing, because my yoga practice has been…struggly. Ben and I have a little joke where he says, Why don’t you do some yoga? And I respond, pouting my lips and wrinkling my brow, I hate yoga!

Funny, right? Sometimes a little true. Lately I’ve been going out with the few friends we’ve made in Shanghai, watching movies and basically flat out refusing to practice. I didn’t even know where my mat was for a few days. And I’m looking for a job as a yoga teacher? Yeah, right.

But like most things, it’s all a phase. I guess. I’m trying to look at my emotions as simply pieces of information, and not law. Like, I feel a little sad today. Maybe I’ll stay in and bake muffins and watch episodes of the new 90210 on the internet. I think because I feel sad, I must be sad and therefore must do things that I do when I feel sad: eat, watch tv, lounge, eat, eat, eat. You get it. But if my emotions are just little clues of information, there’s no real reason I have to make them fact.

Well, this just in: it’s six fifteen, and give or take a few minutes where I just kind of sat on my mat, I practiced for nearly an hour! I even had savasana with my handy dandy Cookie Monster Eye Mask. Not only a savasana, but a sit and a closing meditation and offerng! I NEVER do that! Usually at the end of a home practice, I roll of my mat, check my emails and get back to either coffee drinking or beer drinking (depending on time of day, of course).

I didn’t do anything special, yoga wise. Lunge salutes, focused on back bending as per usual. I will never have Zen Muffin’s back bending prowess.

But I do have muffins. Yummm.