The cascade

I haven’t written about yoga for a long time, not since the days of Under the Stinkwood Tree (http://underthestinkwoodtree.blogspot.com/), but I continue to “flop around,” as my husband puts it, several times a week. Like many other people, I’ve found the pandemic conducive to practicing. For one thing, there are fewer other activities competing for my participation. For another, Zoom makes it ridiculously easy to attend classes—no need to even lace up your shoes. 

Though I haven’t written about yoga lately, its magic continues to reveal itself.  Today I’ve been thinking about how a single cue can set off a cascade of actions. Specifically, when my yoga teacher tells me to draw the tip of my tailbone down, a zillion other things happen: the kink in my lumbar spine releases, drawing my shoulders together and my upper spine into verticality, which in turn centers my head over my shoulders—in a semblance of good posture.

It's like a Jacob’s ladder—that ribbon-and-wood toy where you tilt one of the wooden blocks and the rest of the blocks tumble down.

Of course, it’s not a perfect world: When I’m not in class, I still slouch like a teenager unless the tailbone cue somehow comes to mind. 


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