The First Annual International Mammal Day occurred on September
4th, 2011. It began with the Hedge.
The Boatman trusted me with the hedgeclippers. I am as happy as I look.
Mammal Day is reserved for Mammal Time. Mammal Time is for
engaging in all of your favourite mammal things: sleeping, eating snacks, lying
on top of your loved ones, and possibly licking them. That's what mammals do.
Traditionally and paradoxically, on International Mammal Day, the Boatman and I
give ourselves fully to one Strictly Human Task. On the first International
Mammal Day, we clipped the Hedge.
On the second International Mammal Day, we painted shelves.
First we scrubbed them because they were very dirty. Here I am scrubbing the
shelves. I am working very hard. And I'm wearing the same shirt as on the First
International Mammal Day. Like the shelves, it was very dirty.
Today is the Third Annual International Mammal Day. I don't
think I have that shirt anymore. The Boatman and I and the Big Black Dog are
lying around, eating snacks and licking each other. We are no longer
fundamentalists, and so we are going to forgo the traditional Stictly Human
Task. No hedge to clip, no shelves to paint, no deck to build. Likely, we are
even too lazy to bother with a picture.
Some yoga classes are total nightmares. Last night in
my dream I was teaching “Yoga for Core Strength” at the local studio.
There were almost twenty people there. We kept trying to set up but a
bunch of chairs and couches would keep appearing and getting in the way.
I would get everyone to help me move them and then lo and behold, the chairs
and the couches would emerge again. Finally a big enough space cleared
out and the mysterious chairs and couches relented into a faraway void. I
tried to get everyone to arrange themselves in a semi-circle except it didn’t
work because they wouldn’t stop talking. They were waving their arms
around in circles and yelling at each other and laughing. “Everyone, get down on your hands and knees,” I
hollered. Finally they did, but some of them turned themselves backwards
so that their butts were in my face. I decided to go on with the class
anyways. Although I am an Ashtanga Fundamentalist, I had prepared a
non-ashtanga fundamentalist superior and excellent warm-up sequence. Actually, I had stolen it from my Ashtanga Heroine Kino
MacGregor’s youtube clip. This is it.
The first step was getting everyone into a tabletop position
and making sure they established a firm and solid foundation.
“Press into your knuckles,” I called out to the crowd of
faces and asses. “Foundation! Knuckles, fingertips, heel of the
hand.” I have heard Kino MacGregor call out similar commands, and I felt
good about what I was saying. Then I noticed that one girl didn’t have
any knuckles. She didn’t even have hands. In fact, she didn’t have
forearms either. Or elbows. Her arms ended just above her
elbows. I crawled over to her to see if maybe I could get her to lean
forwards and connect the ends of her arms onto the floor. If that didn’t
work, maybe I could look for blocks or a small bench. Despite being an
Ashtanga Fundamentalist, I was willing and prepared to make the practice
accessible to my student with no arms. When I got to her, I would tell
her to protract her shoulders, draw her ribs in, suck in the region below her
navel, keep her pelvis elevated. The hell with her missing arms.
Everyone can take practice! Then I got closer and I saw that the
space between her ribs and her pelvis was empty. She was missing at least
ten ribs, and all of her rectus and transverse abdominals. Probably a
spleen, pancreas, appendix, and various intestines too.
Terrified, I woke up next to the Boatman, feeling entirely
incompetent about the “Core Strength Yoga” class I will now be teaching on
Wednesday afternoons. This morning, despite it being Saturday, and despite me
being an Ashtanga Fundamentalist, I spent an hour and a half doing all the Kino
Yoga core strength exercises and sequences I could think of without
dying. I almost puked on five occasions. It was absolutely
horrendous.
Hope to see you at Core Strength Yoga
next Wednesday at 4:45.
Remember that tomorrow is the Second Annual International
Mammal Day. To celebrate, the Boatman and I will be doing International
Mammal Things like eating and drinking snacks and licking each other and
ourselves, and clipping the hedge.
Me and the Hedgeclipper on
International Mammal day.
Probably everyone is tired of this photo of me clipping the
hedge, but everyone can rejoice because tomorrow we will take our second annual
photo. Stay tuned.
You can celebrate International Mammal Day from anywhere in
the world and I urge you to do so. If you have a hedge to clip, you can
warm up with core strength exercises, like the ones above, or the ones below.
Kino rocking core strength in Navasana + a variation.
If you need more motivation, I recommend buying the shorts:
Now it is 2016. Kino has moved on to loud exciting tights.
Sometimes buying things is good for core strength. And sometimes it isn't.
