Friday, November 28, 2008

Imagine you're a balloon

Since I take so many yoga classes and have a curiosity about the language of the ineffable, I'm always thinking about how I might give an instruction. So here's an idea for savasana, or corpse pose, the final relaxation at the end of a class:

Imagine your body is a balloon. With each inhalation you inflate and become light and floaty, and with each exhalation you deflate and become heavy and sink into the floor.

But then I start thinking about how, as the receiver of this instruction, I would probably slip away from the guided imagery and drift off to consider all the other items I've inflated: medical gloves, condoms, silly putty, bubble gum, that weird bubble glue with the fumes that comes in a tube with a straw, guest-bed mattresses, wading pools, rubber balls, swim rings, swim wings ... and I begin to feel light-headed.

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