#Hurrah

The thing about yoga is that it forces you to focus on what you're doing ("living in the moment", eh). Seems self-evident and intuitive enough, but putting it into practice is something else entirely.

You (or I, at least) can't draft a mental to-do list while doing, say, sun salutations because you'll forget which salute it is, whether you started with the right or left leg, or whether you're expanding your ribs correctly. (I made that last one up, but I wouldn't be surprised if a yoga instructor somewhere has actually said it.) If your attention wanders to anything else other than your earworm of the moment when in warrior or any other pose (Animals by Maroon5...), you'll lose track of how long you have held/are supposed to hold it, which wastes time.

Truthfully, I've been trying to open my hips and elongate my spine, as I've been feeling a kind of block in the middle of my back that prevents me from doing deeper backbends without pain. Would you believe that hokey-sounding stuff actually made a difference? I can't, but it did! I mean, I've been bending from the waist to go farther back, but that's probably not how you're supposed to do it, I imagine.

Even now, I can hear my yoga instructor's ominously calm voice saying, "That's wrong," and I can practically see her wafting over to correct my pose. Brrr.