Someone once told me that vacations only really help if you break routines and try new things. It’s advice that I solemnly repeat, with eyebrows waggling, to My Love whenever we throw down (waggle) our baggage (wagglewaggle) on the bed (wagglewagglewaggle) at our latest holiday destination.In response, she always obliges by swapping which sides we sleep on. This indicates a clear lack of communication between us or, more likely, that even my most suggestive waggle suffers from a severe lack of lower forehead flexibility.
That's why I enthusiastically supported My Love's decision to spice up our annual beach trip by bringing in a yoga instructor for a few sessions.
Morning stretches on the warm sand.
A symphony of seagulls and crashing waves in our ears.
The scent of undispersed BP crude lubricating our lungs.
This would have to be better than my last attempt at yoga, which consisted of me lying on a cold basement floor getting the heebie-jeebies, via grainy videotape, from a sculpted and oiled yogi dude with a hipster ponytail who urged me to get in touch and breeeeeeathe.
This go round, a perfect harmonic state emerged even before we started. Not between my body and spirit or even between my body and alcoholic spirits, which is usually my idea of Vacation Zen. No, it came between our scheduled yoga time and high tide.
As my swimming skills are suspect, we immediately reconvened on the second-floor deck to the house. Being at a higher elevation should have offered a stellar view of the Atlantic waters gently caressing the shore and carrying off some lounge chairs we had left a little too close to the waterline overnight, however, the rising sun shone like a God's own laser pointer. It also roasted us like the suckling pigs we were determined not to become for once on this vacation. Normally I would have been upset that our spot on the deck meant the house blocked the mainland breeze from reaching us, but given it was already 87 in the shade that morning, I instead felt relieved we were only being cooked by conventional and not convection oven methods.
When I could see through my own perspiration and stench, I focused as best I could on our instructor -- your expected toned and tanned instructor who bore an uncanny resemblance to the sister of a friend of mine, assuming said sister had giving up her two pack of smokes and case of Miller-Lite-a-day habit. This, along with shear lack of coordination, contributed to an incongruity between my mind and body that not only prevented me from focusing on my breathing while folding and unfolding myself like an origami crane but also made me briefly forget how to breathe.
Instructor: "Breathe in. Feel your bellybutton rise slightly with the motion."
My brain: Wait -- wait! My bellybutton's going down. Quick - exhale. Exhale and reboot.
Instructor: "Now, slowly breathe out through your mouth. Notice your bellybutton as it falls slightly."
My brain: Exha- … ack! No air! Inhale, inhale! Through my mouth or nose? Why is my belly button moving the opposite way again? Is it? AHHH! I can't feel my belly button! Where is it?! AHHH!
As a blogger, you would think I'd be better at naval gazing.
Despite my internally idiocy and my dripping pores, something started to click. A calming feeling began to settle through my limbs. My eyes closed, and I listened for my own heart beating. And there it was: low, steady, pumping, thumping like a 10-year-old girl bouncing the deck stairs, one wooden tread at a time …
"Daddy," she called, "do you know where there's a plunger?"
Stamford native Kevin McKeever, a married father of two, is a freelance writer and editor. He also writes the humor blog, Always Home and Uncool, and is a contributor to DadCentric.com. He spent 10 years as a reporter and editor for local newspapers, another nine creating and running the employee communications program for a Fortune 200 company, and then he wised up.
His humorous view of health and wellness, "Rubbing It In," will be featured regularly in future issues of Aetherial Living.
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