return of the jedi

hello blogosphere.  it’s brett here. i am happy to be able to add a post, telling what i see and feel about the familyoga experience…. and i want to tell you about our sweet little jedi in training who was tested to her threshold, and broke. amara does have a way of doing that. we have all been tested.

it was last monday, and lisa was away teaching her yoga class. the evening practice almost did not happen. i had worked all day, amara had a softball game and we still had to eat dinner. during dinner, i had told the girls that afterwards, we were going to do our practice. sasha and amara both informed me that they had homework to do…it was already 8:00, so i did not say anything  else about the practice, and just let it go. about 8:30, they were both done with their homework. so i quickly rolled up the rug, swept the floor and laid out the yoga mats.

sasha and sophia were the first ones to come down. they said that it was cold down stairs. i got up and turned on the heater. in anticipation ,sasha went for the mat next to the warm air vent. sophia laid down on her mat, threw a blanket over herself, and said she just wanted to go to sleep. next came isabel ,who took the next mat closest to the warm air vent. amara laid down on her mat and joined sophia under the blanket. i told the girls that they would warm up when we started doing asana. amara then said “can we just do the end part… the relaxation?” at that point i said “yes… relaxation sounds good”. so i turned off the lamp, and lit a candle. i noticed isabel was lying crooked; but i soon realized she was trying to angle her feet towards the warm air vent. i bent down to straighten her up, and that is when i heard a squabble going on between amara and sophia. i am not certain what the argument was about (i’m sure it had nothing to do with the fact that they were “hiding out” under one blanket. lol!)  but sophia had had enough, and fists went flying.  from my calm yoga perspective, i was crushed. “no.. this can not happen you two” i said. “we are supposed to be relaxing”.

isabel quickly offered a solution.” why don’t amara and sasha change places” she said. sasha grabbed hold of the warm air vent and started yelling “i won’t go, i won’t go”. isabel then proceeded to drag her over to the mat amara was previously on. the room was now in chaos; and it was clear i had lost control. “ok” i said. “i thought you were all tired… it does not look like anyone is tired; so we are going to do the whole practice now”. i turned the lamp back on and told them to sit up on their mats. they were still acting like clowns and not paying any attention to me. then…..i had a revelation.  i remembered lisa telling me about a woman who does star wars yoga with children.  our girls are all about star wars right now; so…. i asked them if they wanted to do star wars yoga. i had their attention. i had each one of them pick a star wars character, and then we would do a pose and name it that character. we did a couple of rounds of this, each child getting to name two poses. so full lotus (padmasana) became yoda’s pose. tree pose (vrksasana) became obi-wan kenobi’s pose.  warrior (virbradhasana II) became princess leia’s pose. lion pose (simhasana) became darth vader pose. and butterfly (baddha konasana) became padme amidala’s pose.  i was pleased.  the girls were pleased.  they headed up to bed, and fell asleep, maybe dreaming about star wars yoga.

namaste