Yoga

ananda marga is sanskrit for "path of bliss." (actually, i knew long ago that ananda meant bliss -- i actually wanted to name my someday-daughter ananda, but someone beat me to it.) it's also the name of a yoga center tucked into an quiet, unassuming street (literally, maamo street) in teacher's village in quezon city. which is where i found myself bright and early saturday morning.

and when i say bright and early, i mean bright and early. i crawled home from jonel's birthday dinner at one in the morning, woke up promptly at 630am, left the house promptly (again) at 730am. all this promptness resulted, in of course, me arriving promptly at 830am in mcdonalds philcoa, where i was to meet my buff and sporty officemate raech (who, incidentally, i wasn't even speaking to last week).

Sunshine

the "early" part took care of the "bright". and that was... kind of amazing. i don't get to enjoy that kind of sunshine and breeze, being dead to the world usually until noon. usually. it's an understatement to say that things have been unusual lately.

if there's any one thing that would have made "path of bliss" real to me, it would have been the sunshine. the way it fell through the welded iron openings of the trike i rode, creating pockets of light and dark on my exposed ankle or blotting the fine brown hairs around raech's face into copper light. the way it streamed through the trees and welcomed me into the house, along with the creaking of the gate and the tentative smile of a woman sitting in the front yard. or the way it warmed the iron benches that i sat on while having lunch, making me feel oddly alive and peaceful at the same time.

and i would have missed all of that if life had just been a little different. if i had insisted on being the way i had been before.

Me, myself and...

the yoga in itself was good. i worked up a light sweat while doing the warmups, and alternated between complete, focused grace and flop-down-on-the-mat, tummy-jiggling embarrassment during the three basic yoga postures we did. all the way through, i felt i owned my body. that i was taking care of it. that we were friends who were learning to do things together. those are nice ways to feel about your body on a saturday morning, especially if you never expected you would.

one of the things i really liked was the bit of personal massage after. who knew i could make myself giddy and faint just by running my index finger around my face a couple of times, or rubbing my hands down my calves? suddenly, in that moment, it made no sense to pay strangers to take care of my body when it was so satisfying to take care of it myself.

it was so satisfying, there was no stopping the next image that flashed in my mind: my fingers tracing the same path on the face of someone i love, and seeing it bring the same peace and satisfaction i felt to his features. his eyes would close and he would relax even just for a little while, maybe pushing a long workday further away from him, and somehow that touch would melt into one of the miniscule million things that brings us closer to each other.

i didn't stop the thought at the time, since thinking of his features in such bliss was actually pretty blissful for me too. but later i wondered: three and a half years. is that all it takes to create such difficulty in separating myself from marlon... even just in my mind?

"Completely relaxed"

i fell asleep halfway through the guided relaxation bit. either i'm the easiest person in the world to suggest things to, or i can just be extremely... present. tell me my toes are relaxed and they'll feel like practically falling off, like bits of jelly. i zonked out at around the time the synthesized female voice (which raech found extremely disturbing) was telling me that my chest was "relaxing... relaxed... completely relaxed."

the vegetarian lunch served at the center was simple and satisfying, veggies with tofu and red rice for fifty bucks. i was so completely relaxed i barely ate. must've spaced out through the entire meal. also, i was so completely relaxed i rationalized taking a cab home instead of commuting (you know, to prolong the relaxation). then i zonked out on my own bed with the lights off for about two hours.

ah well. at least we know it works. and if you think about it, "completely relaxed" isn't such a bad place to be on a saturday morning. or the rest of the time. like monday mornings when you're waiting for a client. *ehem*