2nd 7 minute drill (writing submission - draft)
List item: Starting the practice of yoga.
I am frustrated. I’m in a small room in an athletic center with a bunch of women and mentally ill-equipped for the moment. Why am I here? Well, I need to do something. Running has become intolerable to my back and right hip. So, I enter and look around to find generally fit women. It is my first yoga class. As the class begins and I go through the gentle warm-up exercises and listen to the words of the instructor, a change comes over me. “It’s all in the breath,” she says. I’m thinking this is pretty basic stuff, but makes such eloquent sense. And a few years later, the simple truth emerges from another instructor. You see, you can live without food, without water, and without rest for extended periods, but without the breath, we expire – and pretty quickly!
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2 comments:
I love visiting Frank's Place--thanks for all the great writing here.
I like this piece a lot--I have a sense of the discomfort the narrator feels being in this new situation and I also get a sense that this is a last stop--that this yoga thing has to work for the narrator.
I'd love to hear more about the five senses--you do a good job with the sights of the room and I'd love to hear more about the sounds, the smells, the feel of your body. People tell me that when they do yoga, they are aware of muscles they never knew they had.
The meditation on breathing might be a place to start.
This is vivid to me--I can really imagine being in the room and it makes me want to know more about the narrator's life and all that has brought him to this moment, and what has changed in him in the years since he's done yoga. You can use yoga as a specific site to talk about the changes that have happened. If you want to continue with this piece, you might even use the poses as a structuring principle to the piece.
Great work!
I love to hear you're frustrated. It puts the reader in the mood to listen to your story. I keep reading the mentally-ill equipped (oh no it's mentally ill-equipped)and loving both (or more) meanings.
I'm there with you in the room.
I must comment on your vegetarian Thanksgiving menu. It's a true act of love to do that meal and if other guests were there I suspect there were additional items. We spend days getting ready for traditional, vegetarian and vegetarian gluten free Thanksgiving. I love it all.
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