Belly Flop Yoga

Many years ago, I enrolled Grace and Sam in a local gymnastics class.  Grace had reached that age where girls spend half their lives on their hands and upside down (Lucy is there now), and back then I still thought we should sign our kids up for all the things, in spite of potential genetic dispositions.  (My long legged, big footed, lanky offspring will never be predispositioned to gymnastics, but anyway).  So I had just gotten settled in with my then baby Claire, when the instructor turned to me and said, “Dawn?  Is that Dawn?”  I looked around, obviously assuming there had to be another Dawn around.  “Like, Dawn and Carrie, Dawn?”  She said, walking over.  Well, that had to be me.  My little sister, Carrie, and I were so inseparable for most of the first 20 years of our lives that we were known as dawnandcarrie.

  

“Yes,” I said politely.

  

“I remember you!” She said enthusiastically.  I was even more confused.  Carrie had been a talented gymnast, but I had never shown any knack for it, long and gangly as I have always been.  I had broken my elbow attempting a backwalkover in 3rd grade and had never returned.  “And you had a brother?” She said.  “Brad?”

“That’s right,” I agreed, still perplexed.  I live in my relatively small hometown, and it is not unusual to be recognized by friends of my parents or acquaintances or former teachers or coaches.  Very occasionally, someone remembers me from my own volleyball and basketball careers, when I was an average player on standout, state championship teams.  But being remembered for my gymnastics prowess was altogether unheard of.  “You remember me?”

“Yes!” She said.  “You and your brother both.  I remember you were not very bendy,” she said emphatically.  Humph.

If this woman was coaching back in the mid-80s when my brief and unimpressive gymnastics career began and ended, and still coaching now in the early 2010s when my own offspring were starting what was destined to also be a brief and unimpressive run, that meant she had likely coached hundreds, perhaps thousands of young athletes.  For her to remember me and my brother that many years and students later, we had to be spectacularly bad.  That sort of epic inflexibility has plagued me and certain members of my family for generations.  We are long and strong, but we couldn’t touch our toes if you offered us a million dollars to do so.  As we age, we can barely reach them if you allow us to bend or twist knees and hips and elbows to do so.  We just don’t bend.

Paradoxically, I have been feeling quite a compelling draw towards yoga classes in the last several years.  My own mom began a practice the year Chad and I got married, nearly 19 years ago now, and she is limber and strong and remarkably agile for her age.  Indeed, at nearly 70 years old, she is ten times as flexible and fit as I am.  It is a model I would like to emulate, and as one joint after another starts to creak and protest and require ever increasing intervention, I know I need to get my butt to my mat.  It’s a struggle to convince myself, though.  If I was unbendy at 8, what must I be almost 4 decades later after 20 years of office work, 5 pregnancies, and a midlife hip replacement?

I have dabbled over the last several years, mostly with YouTube in my living room, but occasionally when I braved a class (deep in the back row, head ducked in fear of being recognized or called out for my preposterous lack of ability).  In one memorable class, the instructor provided modifications, as all the good ones do.  “If that isn’t available to you,” she murmured soothingly over the quiet, lilting harps or flutes or whatever they play.  “You can try bending like this,” she said, demonstrating a pose only slightly more accessible.  Glancing at me, she said, “You can turn your knee out this way and then flow into it this way.”  I was still nowhere close.  “Or,” she said, (and was it just me, or did she sound a bit resigned?) she sighed, “Or you can just lie down on your back.”  And, what?  Imagine what the pose feels like?

Physical activity has always been competitive for me.  I like to win, and exercise for most of my life was a means to an end.  I played volleyball and basketball through high school, and then into college.  I continued to play competitive volleyball and in the men’s basketball league for several years after graduating, and then picked up Chad’s love for competitive running after we met.  When the babies started coming, I slowed down, weighed down by the mommy marathon for which I had been dropped unceremoniously on the starting line, dubiously lacking in training.  In the rare seasons when I was sleeping more than 5 consecutive hours a night and neither gestating nor breastfeeding, I signed up for hard core “get in shape” challenges and running races including a memorable half marathon when my youngest was just 2 years old.  Emerging from my decade and a half of very serious physical mothering (beyond just the physical growing and feeding of a child, there were the many years of lifting and carrying and shoe tying and back rubbing) and then entering the season in which my tired body has been sending increasingly urgent signals that more gentle and self-aware exercise is in order.  So, yoga it shall be.

This is not easy for me.  I had a post it note up in my car for awhile that said, “Be brave. Be vulnerable,” as I entered into my pseudo mid life crisis and struggled to redefine and recreate myself in this new season.  (Of course, I snatched it down as soon as I drove anyone besides my own children because, seriously, how embarrassing).  My master minds caught onto this a few weeks ago when one individual exclaimed, “You’re afraid to suck!”  Well, yeah.  I’m too old to suck.  I should have things figured out by now.

But I don’t, and my body and spirit need new things, and new things are hard and we aren’t good at them at first. I have been watching my children more carefully of late, realizing as my oldest heads into her senior year of high school how truly fast these years slip by, and I’ve been increasingly moved by the patience and kindness they show themselves as they seek to master new skills.  Clay has been trying to learn to dive all summer.  I watched with delight as he started the summer standing with his arms extended over his head and his body bent at the waist, leaning slowly, carefully forward only to panic and jump feet first at the beginning of the season.  Then he progressed to belly flops, then to standing dives on the dock with his knees slapping the surface of the water.  Then he mastered the standing dive and moved onto a small hop.  Yesterday, on the traditional last day of summer, he leapt from the back of the boat, 3 feet up from the water, and took advice on keeping his toes pointed.  He’s mastered it.

All summer, he practiced patiently.  Day after day, dive after dive.  He didn’t look around and worry that he looked silly, or that he should already know what he was doing.  He didn’t insist on practicing in the dark, or completely alone.  He didn’t look around sheepishly when he jumped instead of diving on those early days, or when he needed a quick hug and some encouragement on the belly flop weekends.  He just climbed up, time after time, weekend after weekend, and a few short months later, he’s spectacular.  It’s a lesson to me and my stupid, unbendy, competitive pride.

I called my local yoga studio this week for rates and schedules.  I’m going back next week.  My body needs it, and my baby will be a lesson to me.  I’ll spend time flat on my back while the fitter, bendier sorts perform all sorts of pretzeled miracles around me.  I’ll be practicing belly flop yoga, and perhaps, in a season or twenty, I’ll be spectacular, too.