Nooooo problem.

[mrissa]

I have a habit of arguing with my yoga and Pilates DVDs. Or mocking them. For example, when Rodney Yee tells me, "Place your hands on your chest. Feel the softness of your heart," I am not feeling all yoga-serene, because I am mentally 12 years old and thinking, "Dude, that softness is not my heart."

But my favorite Pilates DVD has a part of the routine where Ana Caban tells the viewer, "I want you to keep your gaze directed at your navel."

Um, check.

Comments

[voidmonster.livejournal.com]

A certain manufacturer of computer parts recently changed their company motto. I'm really, truly not kidding when I say that they now proclaim that they are "Rock Solid - Heart Touching". I'm not sure I'd brag about that, myself.

I've heard some very strange instructions on exercise tapes. I really never expected them from a company that makes motherboards.

[writingortyping.livejournal.com]

Umm... well, perhaps what Rodney means is "feel the softness of your heart, which is like the softness of my heart when I started an affair with the woman who is now my wife, but was first the woman I was sleeping with when my then-wife was at home with the three kids, but we (my new wife and I) told the NYT all about our eternal lurve and the powerful soul connection we have when we got married in terms that would embarrass a teenage fanfic writer, and they printed it, so we are, like SO CONNECTED."

ahem.

I have no love for The Yee, even though he does have an awesome warrior pose.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I didn't know any of that, but I already had the impression that he should just not speak. Like, ever.

[writingortyping.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes - he and his current wife were the subject of a NYT "vows" column and it was, to quote me on another board:

That sort of behavior is nauseating but understandable in a teenager. It's just nauseating in an adult, and it's... well, on the nauseating scale, it's a full-on case of Norwalk virus when two adults squee all over the NEW YORK FREAKING TIMES,* when a (now invisible) then-wife was presumably somewhere with the three kids when all this hot-tub Kundalini was going on.

I was at the hairdresser's, getting my once-every-six-week dose of chick magazine reading in a few weeks ago and ran across a one-page essay written by Lance Armstrong's ex-wife, which talked about being that invisible female, having to watch as your husband and the father of your kids parades around the world stage hand-in-hand with a rock star. It wasn't pretty, and this was all too similar.

*And the NYT gets their share of spew (in this increasingly unfortunate metaphor) for their part in publishing it.

[writingortyping.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, I don't remember where I read that, but the unfortunate NYT article is here (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C05EEDA1430F934A35752C0A9619C8B63).

(And yes, in response to deleted quote, my screen name is from the Capote quote re: Jack Kerouac).

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

Sounds like Rodnay Yee may not be a native speaker of English. Perhaps he meant emotional tenderness rather than the physical softness in the area of your heart?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

No, it's pretty clearly a yoga thing -- we are otherwise instructed to have, for example, soft throats, and to relax our eyeballs. I even started knowing what physical thing those instructions connected to, after a couple months.

[writingortyping.livejournal.com]

Yes, definitely a not-uncommon yoga thing.

[profrobert.livejournal.com]

You sure it's not a Nuke LaLoosh thing, like breathing through your eyelids?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

We're dealing with a lot of shit here.

[dendrophilous.livejournal.com]

One of my yoga videos asks me to feel my brain softening. No thanks!

Though it's not as gruesome as the bit that talks about my eyeballs sinking below my cheeks.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ewwwwwwwww.

[ellarien]

This is the sort of thing I probably should bear in mind for writing purposes -- being of rather below-average endowment in that area myself, it wouldn't have occurred to me that many women don't have a line-of-sight to their navels. (And if I put my hands on my chest at random, what I mostly feel is lumpy ridges of bone.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I do in fact have a line of sight to my navel in the "C-curve" posture requested for that particular sequence, but only wearing no bra or a bra that follows the very sensible "lift and separate" principle, not one that's intended to maximize cleavage. But yah, I sometimes wish there were Yoga With Boobs and Pilates With Boobs routines, because I'm not always clear whether the important part of a given pose is to have one's spine curved a particular amount or one's torso off the ground by a particular amount, and even when the DVDs are of women instructors, I am proportionally way, way bustier than they are.

Yoga for Boobies

[jymdyer.livejournal.com]

=v= The "for Dummies" franchise is history!

Re: Yoga for Boobies

[timprov.livejournal.com]

[takumashii.livejournal.com]

Somewhere I heard that the phrase "navel-gazing" started as a yoga reference. I would not be surprised.

(OTOH, I would also not be surprised if it was apocryphal, as 99.5% of funny etymologies are.)

[mamapduck.livejournal.com]

Can you recommend a good yoga dvd for a beginner? Something clearly explained and not to ooky?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It's going to depend on what kind of yoga you want to do, but one of the first tapes I got was Stress Relief Yoga (http://www.amazon.com/Stress-Relief-Yoga-Suzanne-Deason/dp/B00006IX6J/ref=pd_bbs_sr_4/102-2376230-9478555?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1177284134&sr=8-4), and I liked it.