The Day Yoga Almost Gave Me a Stroke

I had been practicing Mysore style with Darby for around two months.  During this time, I was dating the Vegan Life Coach.  The Vegan Life Coach was a devoted vegan and Ashtangi whose dharma was to become a finely tuned instrument of God’s love.  He liked to practice his dharma on me.  

While I was dating the Vegan Life Coach, I ate a great deal of salad.  I became very concerned with liberating my soul through the elimination of eggs and dairy products.  The Vegan Life Coach also recommended that I cut down on caffeine, since the stress induced by an elevated cortisol level had probably caused the large creases above my forehead.  He promised that an impeccable diet had the potential to counteract premature aging. I was twenty-one.   

Although I did my best to do what the Vegan Life Coach recommended, one day I got home to my apartment to find a large plate of cookies on the kitchen.  Although my roommate at the time absolutely wasn’t vegan, I was so tired of salad I could have eaten someone’s head.  Instead I ate three cookies. 

Soon after, I fell asleep.  Miserable chickens and groaning cows haunted my dreams.  When I awoke, I couldn’t get up.  My ceiling was spinning.  I couldn’t tell if my lights were on or off.  My neck was all tingly.  I couldn’t feel my right hand.  I felt thankful that I lived right across from the hospital, but I didn’t know how I would get there.

With my left hand, I called the Vegan Life Coach.  He wasn’t there.  He was probably taking his daily two-hour nap which was supposed to improve digestion and cure forehead wrinkles.  I left the vegan life coach a message.  I told him that Very Bad Karma had come.  I had eaten the cookies.  Now I had nerve damage.  Probably it was also from Backbends.  And shoulderstand.  And the cookies.  I was having a brain tumour.  A stroke.  Paralysis was just around the corner.  They would have to amputate.   

I hung up the phone and decided I absolutely needed to get to the hospital.  Somehow, I got myself out of bed.  Then I got back in.  This happened four or five times.  Each time I would make it a little closer to the door.

I was halfway to the door when my roommate came home.

“Those cookies weren’t vegan,” I told him.  “I am going to the hospital.” 

My roommate told me what was in the cookies. One of the ingredients rhymed with Garijuana.   Suddenly, feeling returned to my left arm. The Vegan Life Coach called.  I went to his place and he helped me cleanse my palate with salad.  The avocados were very tasty. 

 The End.

The Vegan Life Coach is a Yoga Teacher:

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I Let Go, by Erica J. Schmidt

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More Changes from 2011 and an Ode to the Down-and-Out-Club

In Halifax I met an excellent podiatrist who is helping me cure my toenail fungus from far away and long ago.

The Boatman’s mother bought me a pair jeans.  Besides yoga gear, I haven’t worn pants for over two years.  In 2009, I had a Terrible Pants Day which I blamed on my Thighs and un-raw food and so all my pants were gone.  The Boatman’s mother was perplexed by my lack of jeans and she thought that as a northern hemisphere inhabitant, I should absolutely own some.  Because it is absolutely necessary to get along spectacularly with one’s boyfriend’s mother, I agreed.  Now I own black jeans in which or in whom I can sit cross-legged in public without fear of exposing my crotch. 

I had something un-astute to say about my lost Diva Cup.  Against many odds, I had the good sense to censor it almost entirely.  This might be a sign of change, or it might not.  Either way, as far as the Diva Cup is concerned, all is well.  In the world and close to my uterus. 

And finally, I am sad to report that the ladies of the Down-and-Out Club have dispersed across Canada and across the ocean.  The Down-and-Out-Club consists of me and two other beautiful women who used to practice  altogether at Mark and Joanne Darby’s Sattva Yoga Shala in Montreal.

Every morning after Mysore practice, the members of the Down-and-Out-Club would meet for coffee.  Sometimes they would discuss being Down and Out.  Sometimes they would discuss Kapotasana.

 



Not sure who the artist is here. Found it on the Daily cup of Yoga.  I love this picture although it doesn't look very much like me and Darby.  If there are copyright issues involved, please let me know.  Otherwise, (and regardless), thank you and kudos to the artist)



On January 1^st, 2011, at 10 AM, the Down-and-out-club broke into Sattva Yoga Shala and did 108 Sun Salutations.  They held Downward Dog for 3 breaths each time.  Sattva Yoga Shala is the        studio of the world renonwn Ashtanga Teachers Mark and Joanne Darby. Two members of the down-and-out-club had keys because they washed Mark Darby’s floors in exchange for free yoga memberships.  When the sun salutations were finished, it was past noon.  The Down-and-Out club went for coffee on Ste. Catherine’s street where Montréal was just starting to wake up.  Over coffee and some unnutritious delicacy, they watched the people bustle in the New Year’s energy of the bright afternoon.  Probably most of the time, they remembered that they were each one of them, mostly down-and-out.  But so far, on that year, they had Absolutely No Regrets.  It was a good feeling. 
 

I look forward to the day when the Down-and-Out-Club is even less down-and-out than they are now.  (You see, 2011 saw each one of them shed some significant layers of down-and-outness.  Perhaps this was thanks to Ashtanga Yoga.  Or perhaps it was thanks to coffee and un –nutritious delicacies).  In any case, one day the Down-and-Out-Club will reunite in its entirety.  I hope it is somewhere Warm and Exotic, but even a shitty coffee shop will do.  Sipping coffee, and picking at un-nutritious delicacies, they’ll talk about how they used to be Down-and-Out, and they’ll talk about Kapotasana.  They’ll  think about their Whole Lives and how, so far, they have Absolutely No Regrets.  And it will be such a good feeling. 

The End.

Drawing by Sara E. Enquist, D-A-O member and talented illustrator of my self-help book, I Let Go
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