Push Down With Your Feet
©SGHolland March 2022
A slip of a human being full of energy and know-how came last Monday.
I’ve “tried yoga” at different times in my rather long life, but no curious adventuring was much like what I did with (ageless) Zoe and three other (old)people on Monday.
For a little over an hour we did things like pushing our feet down while standing, and holding our arms up, hands in a praying-like position, and our fingers spreading themselves out, then, like a flower blooming as we reached for the sky.
“Wiggle your toes,” “pretend you are a unicorn”, “breathe out and hold,” “now let your breath out all the way and touch your knees.” “Susan, let your head hang down!” (Ahem.)
Three elderly students with flat rubber mats and nice folded quilts and foam “bricks” dropped all notions of self-consciousness in the process of doing gentle postures and motions with our creaky bodies. Zoe is a great teacher.
And we all loved it. We laughed. We smiled. We obeyed as well as we could.
Sitting on the edge of a chair and rising up (without that forward roll we seniors always use when rising up out of chairs); Pretending the tops of our heads are aimed at the ceiling with our unicorn horn. Dropping our shoulders.
“I’m the only one allowed to talk,” says Zoe with her brilliantly friendly smile.
In a while, we do a loosening up dance and I dare to sing Sha-Boom Sha-Boom. Zoe looks at me with that same look the elementary teachers used to in my elementary school.
Well, only a few notes and then I behave myself.
“Lie on the floor with the soles of your feet together.” (This requires bending knees wide open. Such a vulnerable position!)
Zoe moves to each of us, checking whether we are stretched out just right. She corrects quirks we each have about lying on the floor.
“Now, roll yourselves into a ball.”
We watch what she is showing us. Then we roll ourselves back down to a prone position…”slowly,” she says…”with each vertebra coming down one at a time.” We are again on our backs, waiting.
“Now start at the end of your spine and arch your spine, again letting each vertebra move upward in turn. Again, start at your tailbone and allow yourself to roll into a ball again. Repeat. Repeat.”
And to me she says, “Susan, let your shoulders down so your shoulder blades are flat against your body.”
Yep, she’s got me figured out. (Is it, as I claim, family DNA, this slouch? She’s got me lying straight with my bones all in alignment… and it feels good!)
After slowly going through more paces, we all “took a nap.” Well, sort of. We were lying there on our mats, with the quilts expertly placed between body and floor at the places that Zoe saw we needed them, and then we gradually let every bone in our bodies lie heavily floorward, “pushing into the floor.”
Grounded, she called it. Everything limp; even our fingers.
For five or more minutes we rested there and yes, I could have stayed there and slept forever. She asked us to wake up very slowly, by first moving our fingers and then our toes, and then wiggling our feet and our hands, and then wobbling our heads around.
We might as well have had a night’s sleep, we were so relaxed. And energized.
We made ourselves get up the Yoga way without hanging on to furniture, just putting our feet “this way — no not that way” and then sort of rolling up to a standing position using our body weight to propel us! No knee strain!
Then…”Oh yes! Look at a clock! Let just your eyes look at 12, then 3, then 6, then 9 and back to twelve. Do it without moving your head. Now do it backward.”
Never ever imagined that my eyes had actual muscles to exercise!
It’s not “woo woo” I decided. I’m looking forward to next time. I’m trying to mind my shoulders and push down to the ground with my feet.
