This Savasana Brought to You by George Costanza

I have been practicing yoga for a long time. In one form or another I have been contorting, counting, releasing, and you know– feeling the vitality, or whatever, on the mat for more than two decades–off and on. Yoga calms my nerves and does wonders for my trick-neck. Despite my fairly consistent practice, I’ve always been bothered by the fact that I’m not motivated to practice on my own, at home. Or wherever. Because that’s part of the beauty of yoga. It’s like running. Just as when you want to go for a run, all you need is your shoes, when you’re ready to bust out a pose, it’s just you and the mat.

Unless you’re like me and you need to drive halfway across town at an inconvenient hour and pay someone else to tell you to bust out a pose.

So I set out to do something about my lack of intrinsic motivation. I have embarked on a 6-week plan that includes daily–DAILY–yoga practice. And this is to be done each morning, ideally first thing. The first day I got up all bright eyed and ohm-y. (It’s January, after all.) I progressed through the proscribed series of poses, congratulating myself on both my ability to resist the temptation of the red snooze bar on my phone, and the fortitude to assume the positions without external direction. Yay, Me!

If you’re familiar with any standard yoga practice, you know that at the end of all the strenuous postures comes a time of relaxation, Corpse Pose, or Savasana. The timing of my morning practice had my Savasana hit at just about the time the rest of the family’s alarm clocks chimed. This didn’t do a lot for my peace and composure. I imagined various family members finding me there in the hall, laid out on my mat like–  a corpse, and maybe stepping on my head. Oh yeah, they would. I tried to remind myself to let those distractions go, to stay in the moment, focus on my breath, and whatever else that barefooted, d0-ragged yogi on the cover of the book advised. But the Eastern wisdom was drowned out by a stronger, louder call to action:

“Serenity NOW!”

Next time you go to the mat, make sure you take your inner George Costanza.

Why is it Easier to Buy a Car Than a Gym Membership?

Last week the transmission on my husband’s 1998 Ford Explorer went out. We’d known for a while that car shopping was in our future, but the thought of braving the heat and those awful car-selling tactics had caused us to wait until the final moment to do it.

My husband did his homework online and then we plodded down to the lot together. He in charge of acting manly and disinterested – I in charge of on-the-spot number crunching and keeping him focused in the face of sleek interiors and state-of-the-art navigation systems. We had the whole good-spouse-bad-spouse thing worked out. And in just a few days we had test driven, feature compared, and signed on the dotted line for sixty payments on a 2008 Toyota Tundra. (Yes, a big ole truck. That is a whole other story.) Read more