BLOGASANA

• I have decided that I can’t teach the Juice Box Warm & Mellow yoga class without Jim there. As usual, he’s spoiled me. While I’m out in the lobby talking to students before class he makes sure there are enough props for everyone and works on the room’s temperature. Afterwards he stays to clean up. Last night after I finished talking to students I went into the yoga room to do post-class tidying and it was all done. My sweet-as-pie someone took care of everything. He only gets to come to my classes on the weeks that we don’t have the kids. When we do I’m on my own. Without him I’ll have to, like, work.  

• At Juice Box Yoga—a Bikram method stuido, my friends—the last Friday class of each month is a music class. Bikram yoga is traditionally done without music. The only music you hear during the really unpleasant 90 minutes is the nonstop melodic commands of your yogi bootcamp instructor. This last month’s music class was the purview of Cameron, my yogi co-conspirator, and he made it all 90s music. Team, those are my jams. I sang along to NSYNC and Backstreet Boys and Smash Mouth and Britney Spears and I bounced to the beat in awkward pose and tree and, well, all the postures, and then when I came out of class I told our famously friendly front desk staffer, “I just spent 90 minutes back in high school. I was, like, in the back seats of cars making out with guys and skipping class and everything.” While I’m sure all the students enjoyed the class, I’m as sure as I can be that no one enjoyed it more than me. It was my era. I knew all the words. After class my Jim said, “Thanks for being so hot,”—Well, um, thanks and you’re welcome—“and young!” If knowing all the words to 90s tunes means I’m young, I’ll take it. There are some definite benefits of marrying a man a few years outside my generation.

• It’s so cute how my Maps app thinks that I know what way is south. Start out going south on 4th street. Is this 4th street? Which way is south? Do you mean left? Right? I’m asking for your help, dammit!

• Josie and I are going to be acrobats. Also we want a pigmy penguin. In theory. We don’t want to have to care for it.

• The other night Jim, Dustin, and I were in the kitchen talking and Jim mentioned someone and Dustin said, “Wait, do we hate them?” It’s a team mentality in the Elliker house.

• I've been bending and such on the mat for the last decade but today is my five-year Bikram yoga anniversary. I’m a thing made of choices that led me to what I am. I’ve made those choices consciously. While I may not be happy with how I look or how a particular project is going, and I know I’m a work in progress, I always like the actual person I’ve chosen to be. I’m this me on purpose, and Bikram Yoga has been one of the very most important elements of making this right-now person. Yoga overall has given me much—some patience, confidence, acceptance of vulnerability, and respect for limitations, etc.—but Bikram yoga has given me the most. Perhaps that’s because I’ve given most of my time to my Bikram practice. Bikram yoga gave me a pile of people that I can confidently call my yoga family. It’s given me opportunities for growth. It’s made my body into something I can live with (and something my husband loves). It’s smashed my inhibitions. Because of Bikram yoga I love to sweat and live to try again. 

• Work’s been rocky this week. It’s the start of a new quarter, my partner and I have a new list of doctors to call on, and the office addresses in our database are all effed up. We know where to find most of the docs on our lists and we fix the addresses as we go, but I just got assigned doctors up at the lake and those addresses are a mess. I was talking with my partner yesterday about what a joke this week has been, trying to get our jobs done and failing ‘cause we can’t find everyone we’re supposed to see, and I told her that for some of the doctors I’ve resorted to googling them and hoping the most common address in the search results is the lucky one. “It’s so primitive,” I told her, “but what else have we got?” I like how I’m calling the entire world in the palm of my hand by way of my phone primitive. 

• Last night I came out of the yoga room after teaching the Warm & Mellow class and said to Kaitlin, the front desk maven, “I just made that class my bitch.” And I really did. For my last few classes I’ve been feeling like I just suck at teaching. Like, what the hell am I doing? But last night was awesome. It felt good in the room, like cues were making sense. I made the students laugh while enduring some really uncomfortable postures. At least half the class—we had 22 people I think—were new to this class. A fair few were new to yoga altogether. After class students told me that that hour was exactly what they needed. One sweetie hugged me. And when they left they said, “See you next time.”

• Wait, do you want to come to my class? Do! Come stretch and such in my smells-like-effort home away from home. It’s a bargain ($10 drop-in) and you can check out the Juice Box schedule by clicking here.