I've been hemming and hawing all week about whether I would return to my postnatal yoga class this week. My initial fee covered eight classes over 11 weeks, and now that those are used up, I have the option to continue for another four classes over six weeks before my instructor packs it up for the summer. (At right, M'hijo practices his reclining frog pose)
I have another 45 minutes to decide, but I'm 95% positive I won't be returning. Which is not to say that I didn't love the class. It was, in many ways, the best yoga class I've taken. But I think it's outlived it's usefulness for me. At least, it's not so useful that I'm willing to give up most of my Tuesdays and ten bucks a shot for it.
If you've never been to a postnatal yoga class, it can be a shock. Imagine 20 postpartum women in a room, all bursting with chatter about their new experiences, many red-eyed from lack of sleep, but jittery from nonlack of coffee, most aching in at least three parts of their bodies. Now picture their 20 babies with them, ranging in age from two weeks to eight months, some sitting up, playing with their toys and shrieking with laughter, others lying down and shrieking with hunger and rage. Now picture about a hundred pounds of baby paraphrenalia (diaper bags, soothers, toys, blankets, stuffed animals, rattles) spread all over. Now picture forty huge-with-milk breasts flashing about at all times. Put it all together, add the calmest and most serene yoga instructor in the universe, and you've got my postnatal yoga class. It can be a crazy environment to try to find some peace, but somehow it works.
I've been practicing yoga, on and off, for about ten years, and I really like the mind-body connection stuff. But the really key part of this class for me was completely physical. The poses and exercises we did were specifically geared toward the needs of a woman who has been pregnant for nine months, has laboured and given birth, and, perhaps most importantly, is now spending all her time carrying around a very heavy, sometimes squirming sack of sugar, and not always lifting with her legs. I've had sore hip joints since last summer, and a sore back since February, and Tuesdays were the only days these pains went away, because of yoga.
But now, those aches and pains have abated somewhat, and I'm stretching at Tae-Kwon Do, which is helping, and mostly it's just really sunny out and I would rather plant my new hostas and weed and cut the grass than pack up M'hijo and ride the bus for 15 minutes then walk for another 15 to get to the yoga studio.
Yoga classes usually end with savasana, and relaxation, and sometimes a reading or a meditation. Helga, my postnatal instructor, recognizes that new moms have neither the focussing power, nor the inclination, to listen to a long reading. So she keeps it short and sweet. My favourite one is something even the most frazzled and fatigued mama can grasp: "Life, for all its imperfections, is good."
