in which there is suprisingly little yoga, our heroine get's soaked to the bone and she is home in time for a movie.
I signed up for pregnancy yoga classes because I like yoga in general and it doesn't hurt to spend a bit of gentle me-time and getting pointers about breathing and relaxing poses and such. This course I choose on purpose as it stated to NOT BE ALL MYSTICAL AND SUCH on the website. My friends had mixed stories about their yoga for pregnancy classes, ranging from immitaing birth during class to envisioning themselves to be trees/goddess/etc.
From the women who have gong through labor, most of them threw out 90% of what they learned within ten minutes so I'm not expecting to beome a birthing goddess or something. It's nice to hang out with other pregnanct ladies, because it makes me feel less fat and clumsy (hey, we all are!) and it is nice to have a steady group to work with in the next three months. My first mistake was to think I knew theroute, but in fact taking the longer way and ariving last. It was raining, my coat turned out to not be water-tight but I did find the address and parked my bike in the front garden. The classes are held at the work space at the teachers home: the ground floor is an okay sized room with a small kitchenette and toilet, she lives upstairs with her husband and two kids. I had a bit of envy on account of her having a workspace at home, but then I realized that she is giving so many workshops and classes that it's totally worth it for her. For me, not so much. Part of me still wants to get more out of teaching bellydance and such, even though I know how much work it is and how little money it makes.
Walking into the room, I realized I didn't bring a towel or blanket as indicated, or wear stretchy clothes like yoga pants. No siree, I came to my first pregnancy yoga workshop totally unprepared to do yoga. This turned out to not be much of a problem. The teacher is a lady in her forties, with a medium sized forties figure and about 5 ft tall. Along the walls eight yoga mats were laid out, with seven pregnant women on top of them. Shit, they all had their hair tied back! I should have tied my hair back, or at least bring an elastic band to do so! The teacher gave us a cup of tea and a bit of liquorice and we did an introductory round. Most of us are expecting a first baby, just one of the ladies is having a second child. She added the story of her birth to her introduction, which in short came down to wanting to give birth at home but after one hour of intense contractions with just 1 cm of cervix widening, she went to the hopsital to get an epidural. Still took the hospital five hours to give her one after things were great. That's one big point for modern medicine. Most of the ladies want to deliver in the hospital, I turn out to be the only one opting for a home birth (and there is 50% chance of going to the hospital anyway due to whatever might happen). I mentioned that several of my friends had a Doula, turned out that most of them never heard of a Doula and we talked a bit about it. It made me feel like I was the most hippie mom in the room. It was nice though, after the introductions we did two sun salutations that were adjusted for pregnant women and an inversion with our legs up against the wall, that should help with restless leg syndrome and cramps.
Afterwards we chatted a bit on our way out and I was back in time to get on the couch with E. and Little Brother (he was in the neighborhood and joined us for dinner). I walked in on Mad Max- Fury road at the moment that a pregnant lady was giving birth while being chased by post apocalyptic dudes through a sand dessert. There were flaming guitars involved. After that we watched Jurrassic World, which was better than I anticipated, though a bit overcrowded with dinosaurs. I mean, animals in real life cramped up in a field with so many would have totally trampled all the greens and eaten all the things. Not these dinosaurs, they can have 50 of these in a green pasture the size of a poststamp. That movie totally didn't need it either: had they stuck with less fluff the main scary dinosaurs would have been more prominent and scarier and such.
It was a good night, I look forward to the second ypga class next week where I will show up on time, appropriately dressed and with my hair pulled back.
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