Om . . . and other strange noises
A few weeks ago, my slightly crunchy (vegetarian, Dean-voting, Birkenstock-wearing) sister-in-law gave R. and I a great pregnancy "care package," which included some mother-to-be herbal tea, a book on how to give your kids non-conformist names and, most usefully, a pre-natal yoga video.
I'm enough of a yoga video fan that I've learned long ago to disregard the new age music and other silliness and just make use of the very nice stretching and breathing exercises. And, since I was quickly reaching the limits of my ability to follow my usual favorite, the well-sculpted and scantily-clad Rodney Yee, I immediately started using the one she'd given me.
It was, admittedly, even more ridiculous than your usual yoga fare.
First of all, there was the instructor, Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa, a (non-pregnant) woman in a white turban who reminds me of the flight attendant in the Airplane movies.
I checked out her bio on-line and found this:
Gurmukh is the co-founder and director of Golden Bridge Nite Moon, Los Angeles' premier center for the study and practice of Kundalini Yoga and Meditation. Since being baptized 35 years ago with the Sikh spiritual name meaning "One who helps people across the world ocean," Gurmukh has dedicated her life to fulfilling her namesake. For nearly three decades, students in Los Angeles and from around the world have sought out her classes in Kundalini Yoga, meditation, and pre-and post-natal care. She has been married for 22 years and has a 22 year old daughter who also lives in Los Angeles.
Throughout the video, Gurmukh offers up classic yoga-isms, like "Breathe through your pituitary gland," but what really makes the experience special is that she suggests all kinds of great suggestions for visualization exercises.
"Imagine yourself in a forest," she says (I'm paraphrasing here), "where you can give birth surrounded only by wise women." She's all about how you don't need Western medicine or how-to books and how great it would be if you could just squat in the woods to give birth.
Personally, while I do jive with the whole "I'm not sick; I'm pregnant" philosophy that holds that the average healthy woman doesn't need a ton of medical intervention when she gives birth, I am kind of a fan of Western medicine and its ability to, say, keep preemies alive and prevent women from dying in childbirth.
So I just tune out Gurmukh when she gets into the chanting weirdness, or substitute my own chants, like "Epi - Dur - Al" and "Lux - ur - y Birth - ing Suite."
In fact, I'd really come to enjoy my morning yoga routine. And I think of the other women in the video (Gurmukh's students) as people I know, sort of my compatriots in the whole pregnancy thing. (Even though, having been pregnant in 1998 when the video was made, they are now, presumably, the mothers of third graders.)
I hate the woman in the yellow and black outfit because she's ridiculously flexible. But I like the Asian woman in the red shirt, since she seems to be carrying her baby in the same uncomfortable "low" position that I am. And I really like the very pregnant woman in braided pigtails and black shorts who occassionally just stops doing whatever the prescribed yoga move is and takes a little rest. I bet she snacked a lot during the rehearsals.
Anyway, the whole thing had become so normal to me that I was completely unprepared for R.'s reaction to it, when, working in his home office, he happened to overhear Gurmukh's utterly ridiculous audio commentary. He was laughing so hard that he had to stop working and come out to the living room to see if I'd completly lost my mind and joined some sort of pregnancy cult.
If I were more technically skilled, I'd dub over Gurmukh with someone else's voice, like Rodney Yee's, saying things like, "Reach over the right. Now breathe. Now think about ice cream. Exhale."
For now, though, I'll just have to hang out with my imaginary yoga friends in private.
