Yoga for the Stiff and Tired

So I’m dreaming about what to call my flavor of yoga, which seems to have a bit more boogie than a traditional practice might have, and also be more geared to my kind of body — which tends to be stiff and tired these days.  At least more stiff and tired than what I think of as a classic kind of yoga body — the Christy Turlington, Hilaria Baldwin kinda body, or the 13-year-old Indian boy body.   I don’t see a lot of celebrity Yoga pictures where they’re just standing there, playing with the tilt of their pelvis, feeling the thigh bones kiss into in their sockets, feeling the weight in their feet forward, back, all around, feeling their knees soften, stomachs lengthen, the earth supporting them, and breathing while all that’s happening.

No, that doesn’t photograph all that well I suppose, except maybe a blissed out kind of smile.  It would be hard to really pay attention to the micro-moves our bodies make while doing that happy, pretty peaceful yogi face, prayer hands to heart ... you know the one.

My relaxed face is slack-jawed and double-chinned, I’m pretty sure.  White crescent eyeball slices peaking out from heavy lids.  Sometimes there’s drool.  

I wouldn’t want it on the cover of a magazine.  I’m not that advanced.  But it feels pretty cool to relax my face and realize how that Never Happens except maybe when I’m sleeping.  And now that is, perhaps, my favorite yoga cue — “Relax your face”  — my teacher Eddie Ellner, founder of Yoga Soup, gave me that one.

Relax your face.  Relax your jaw.  Relax the corners of your eyes.  Let your forehead open.  Let your right side open to the right.  Let your left side open to the left.  Breathe.

I’m gonna keep going.

www.livingeveryminuteofit.com