Dames: Declare Your Independence!

On my last blog I talked about my new foray into Bikram Yoga. I can’t tell you how much I love it. I thought that frozen shoulders and stiff ankles were my future, but now I realize if I simply stretch them out they work much more effectively.

I’m sure my ligaments have been screaming that for the past few years as I shifted from my computer chair to my car seat to my couch. I’m sure my insides started to look frozen from lack of movement,  like those people in Pompeii that were covered by volcanic ash while going about normal activities like sitting down or making love.

Other than getting used to the smell of a room maintained at 105 degrees all day with sweat poured into the carpet, and the fact that my mom warned me about “athlete’s face” (her thought of what might happen if someone has athlete’s feet and my face slips off my mat and lands on the carpet where they stood), Bikram Yoga is the best gift I’ve given myself in a long time.

Yoga has made me realize that Dick Van Dyke was right. When asked how he has stayed so healthy well into his eighties, he said, “Keep moving.” Bikram Yoga teaches you to move your eyes from floor to ceiling and wall to wall all day . . . because it will actually improve your eyesight. I practice this while waiting in line at  Target. Not only will moving your eyes around improve your sight, it will move you to the front of the line very quickly.

Here’s the other really cool thing about yoga. There is no talking, no music, nothing. I thought that could send me straight into an asylum, like the time I visited a Quaker church. But, instead, it’s incredibly calming.

As women, we are still doing it all. I was watching the Kardashians with my daughter (I know, you can fuss at me later for that one) and was amazed that Kris Jenner, the mother, runs multiple businesses and yet the grown kids were upset because she wasn’t fixing dinner for them. Really? Maybe Bruce Jenner can step out of the plastic surgeon’s office long enough to help out, or those thirty-year-old kids can cook a meal themselves.

Breathe in, stretch back, breathe out.

Dames, we deserve better. We deserve to stand in a room and sweat in silence. We deserve a retreat. We deserve to have gas without anybody laughing (that note is for the woman to my left who had that unfortunate moment during the last class). We deserve to keep moving without feeling guilty because somebody else wants something.

This July 4th, declare your own freedom and do something that makes you stronger, smarter, or calmer. You have my permission.