The Foot Goes Where, Exactly

January nineteenth. I went to a yoga class this morning. This is relevant because I have never been to a yoga class before in my life, and I went alone, which means there was no one to follow and no one to blame when I ended up in what I later learned was a modified something-or-other when everyone else was in a different modified something-or-other.

I picked it up because of the open question I wrote about a few weeks ago, the one about what I actually want to be doing with my body this winter, now that running has gone quiet. I didn't plan to walk into a yoga class specifically. I walked into the community center to look at the January schedule and the Tuesday morning class was the only one that started after eight and before noon, which is apparently the full extent of my decision-making framework right now. The woman at the desk handed me a mat from the stack and I said thank you like I'd done this a hundred times.

Figuring out where my feet go. Still working on it.

I have not done this a hundred times. I did not know where my feet were supposed to go for approximately the first twenty minutes. The instructor had a genuinely calm voice, which helped. I kept looking at the woman two mats over, not to copy her exactly, more just to confirm that there was a human shape I was aiming for. At one point I was facing the wrong direction entirely and I only knew because of the window. That's fine. That's what a first time is.

After. Sitting with it for a second.

Afterward I sat on the mat for an extra minute while people rolled theirs up around me. I was trying to decide if I wanted to come back. I decided yes before I'd finished the thought. I don't know what that means yet, but I'm leaving it there for now, the same way Gerald sits on the windowsill and the collapsed bowl sits next to him, just a fact of the apartment. Something I did. Something I might keep doing.