namaste.

this evening, katie and i decided to meet up for a yoga class at a great studio downtown called rama lotus. i haven't been particularly stressed (being on vacation and all...) but i am always up for some serious stretching and bending my body into pretzel-like formations.

it is incredible how unflexible we become as adults. i remember when i took a jazz class as a kid, i won a chocolate bar for holding the splits for over 30 seconds. now i can barely kick my leg above my hip! some of the yoga poses are inhuman. why is it necessary to have our toes touch the floor above our heads? will this help me on my journey to a centred and balanced life?

when we first began, our instructor told us to remove all thoughts from our heads and focus solely on our breathing. go ahead, give it a try right now! it is almost impossible to take away all the thoughts from your consciousness. even thinking about not thinking becomes a thought in itself. however, as hokey as this all sounds, i find a lot of validity to what they are saying. if you think of a yoga pose as a metaphor for life, perhaps opening up our physical selves can lead to opening ourselves up mentally and emotionally. ridding any and all thoughts is an incredibly cleansing experience - one that you don't realize you have succeeded at until the moment has passed. the best part of each yoga class is certainly the last ten minutes, the relaxation session in corpse pose. now, this is a pose that i can hold. in fact, i'm always afraid i'll fall asleep!

they say experts can hold some yoga poses for up to two hours. for a thinker, that is a lot of time not to think.

on the subject of opening up, my dad has been in the media a bit this week on the subject of the anglican church and whether or not they will be blessing same sex unions. this week, national synod is meeting in winnipeg to make a decision on the stance of the anglican church. now; i am not particularly religious, but i do understand that this is a touchy subject for many people. i am so proud of my dad for a) having a particularly liberal opinion and having the guts to share it with his congregation but b) discussing the issue on national tv without preaching his own personal opinion and focusing more on how the church can move forward into the future (in the case of either decision) without having these opposing opinions ruin the community.

way to go, dad.