Life | A Slice of Cuplet

Last night I spent a couple of intense hours in a gaggle of ridiculous, gravity defying positions. And I wasn’t alone… By the end of the night I was out of breath, sweating in some very odd places, and feeling strangely pleased with myself. And I’m doing it all again next week…

No! I was not doing that, you filthy little beggars. Honestly, get your minds out of the gutter! I’m talking about yoga folks!

Yoga Cookie

In the spirit of my new “something’s” for 2012, yoga is one that has been in the back of my mind for a while. A friend has been telling me for years to go to yoga and, being the kind-hearted and supportive friend I am, I’ve always ignored him. It’s a little game we play…

Friend: “You really should try yoga”. Me: “You really should eat more cake”. Friend: “You should go see someone about not sleeping”. Me:“You should go see someone about your foot” (he has a bad foot). Friend: “Stop eating so much cake!”. Me: “Stop drinking so much coffee!”.

And so it continues, the infinite loop of mutually disregarded suggestions. However, having gone through some pretty low lows in the past 6 months, and all the stuff that brings with it – insomnia, stress, those bastard cluster headaches – it seemed like as good a time as any to give it go. So it was one of the first “something’s” to go on my list. I did A LOT of research beforehand, naturally. I have OCD yeah, so I research everything to within an inch of its life! Maybe I should add “be less obsessive about stuff” to my list? Hmm. One thing at a time… :).

After blowing up the internet for a few weeks, I found a lovely small class, just on the other side of town. My teacher (the super friendly Vanessa) was brilliant in the run up to my first lesson, responding to my oh-so-many emails, answering all my questions, and basically doing an all round tip-top job of reassuring me I’d be absolutely fine in the group. Just what I needed to hear (I can get a touch anxious you see…). There were a couple of false starts with my foray into the bendy, breathy stuffs though. Week One was cancelled. In Week Two there were navigational issues. But they say third time’s the charm, right? So off I went, kitted out in my newly purchased yoga pants (thanks all-knowing yoga oracle in Brighton sports shop for those!), ready to get my relax on. Oh Cups, how naïve you were…

So here’s something my teacher didn’t tell me – yoga is hard! I turned up ready for a bit of light stretching, some breathing exercises, maybe some slightly harder stretching later on, all topped off with a 10 minute lie down to help promote the all new serene and calm me. Um. Yeah. It wasn’t really like that. And it wasn’t really a beginners class either (I knew that already, but Vanessa had reassured me I’d be fine – bless her delightful naivety). There was stretching. Oh man was there stretching! I’m not sure bodies are meant to be in some of those positions. At least mine isn’t meant to be. And I think I had somewhat underestimated how much coordination was needed to pull off moving between positions. I’m not the most coordinated person when it comes to such things (which is precisely why I have never taken dance/aerobics classes – the sheer horror is unimaginable!) But how fluid and easy my classmates made it look. I tried to copy what they were doing, but good grief, I have never seen grace lost so quickly and to such an extent! My balancing wasn’t as bad, although it wasn’t great. I guess I should have mentioned I don’t really have a very good sense of balance either. So to recap, I have no coordination AND poor balance. Yup. Yoga and me are an ideal fit :).

Extreme stretching aside, there’s a lot of focus on breathing in yoga. Good. I do like a spot of breathing. It’s kinda essential for most things. But this didn’t seem to be my normal run-of-the-mill everyday breathing. More precise breathing was required here. But it’s just breathing right? How hard can that be? Um. Well, usually not that hard. But combined with trying to remember what position I was doing, which position came next, how to keep my balance, and how to not giggle every time Vanessa said “downward dog” (snigger), breathing became one tricky customer! Inhale on this movement. Exhale on that movement. Hold the inhale. Hold the exhale. Put the inhale inside the exhale, then stroke the exhale and take the inhale out for dinner and a movie… My head was spinning, probably from lack of oxygen :). There were a lot of rules when it came to breathing! There were “tools” too. Huge straps – resembling rubber bands for giants – intended for wrapping round your feet to get your legs in positions even Debbie wouldn’t attempt, be she in Dallas or not. And then there were the foam blocks, proffered to those of us with “short arms” when we attempted to complete what Vanessa declared to be a “slightly more advanced” (understatement!) move of lifting our crossed-legged bodies completely off the floor. Yes, please give me the foam blocks. Because that’s the reason I can’t lift my entire body off the floor – the absence of foam :).

Laboured breathing , poor coordination, shaky balance and short arms aside, I persevered, like a super persevering type thing! And I found myself really rather enjoying it. Not necessarily whilst I was doing it, but afterwards I felt really good :). And not at all sore today. I like to think that’s more to do with being fairly fit already, and my core muscles being used to getting a workout thanks to my hours in the gym. I like to think it’s because of that, and not because I was in fact doing it all wrong. Only time will tell. I’m sure I’ll get better at the fundamentals too. Vanessa agreed with this, as she reminded me not to be so hard on myself. Blimey, one class in and she knows me inside out already!

So I’ll be yoga-class bound every week, practising the movements and the breathing techniques, trying not to fall down or giggle at the silly names of the positions, in the hope that it’ll not only boost my fitness, but that it’ll help me deal with life’s stresses a bit better. A calm Cuplet is a happy Cuplet after all. But there’s one thing I won’t need to work on before my next date with the mat; the lying down bit. I’m already an expert in that :).

Talker, chatterbox, blabbermouth. Verbal diarrhoea, talk-for-England, talk the back-end off a donkey (what does that even mean?!). Yup, in my time these things have all been said about me or to me. Usually if someone brings the name-calling, I would launch into a huge (albeit it polite – I can’t bear confrontation) argument as to why the person saying such things was in fact totally unfounded in their opinions, and therefore grossly mistaken. There’d probably be a slide show and a Q and A at the end too. But, in this instance, I can make no such defense of myself. No slide presentation. Nope. Because I do talk. A Lot.

It may not come across in my blog, but I’m a naturally timid person. I was painfully shy growing up, but it’s kinda hard to get on in the world if you’re a shrinking violet. So post-school, and into the scary, loud, daunting world of grown-ups and work, I had to create an alternative “me” – one that seemed outgoing and confident and assured – just so I could ask my boss how he liked his coffee! Bless…

My first job was like being thrown into the fire. Working at an entertainment agency, the phone was always ringing, artists were always dropping by the office, and there were always gigs to go to (to support the guys on our books). That’s a bit of a tricky environment to be in if you struggle to say hello without glowing hotter than the sun! If that wasn’t enough of a challenge, one of my bosses was a vampire, his girlfriend was a snake charmer-come-contortionist, and my first (and only!) visit to our London office (where they both resided) was met with this throw away remark from said boss: “Watch where you sit. Henrietta’s out here somewhere”. “Who’s Henrietta?” I asked. “She’s Nicky’s python”. Ohh, well that’s alright then, I thought there was something to worry about for a moment..! WTF?!! Into the fire indeed! Anyways, I’m rambling (oh man, it’s even started to spill over into my writing!)…

So, over the years, this alternative me has been getting quite accomplished at faking cool ease at conversing with strangers – at jobs, on courses, at social do-dahs. Yup, I can just about handle these things. But now it’s started to go the other way. Now I can’t stop talking! Much like my struggle to talk to people in the first place, this over-talking is a nervous thing. When I was younger, the difficulty I found in talking to people was borne out of uncomfortability – shrinking into the background was much easier for me to handle than actually putting myself out there. Now, I’m well and truly out there, talking nineteen to the dozen at every opportunity, because the uncomfortability of audible silences is like fingernails on a blackboard to me. If there’s a break in conversation, or cessation of noise, the awkwardness of the silence is too much for my poor little self to take. So I fill it, with all-consuming stuttering gobbledygook.

I’ve been increasingly aware of this recently, but I hadn’t quite realised the full extent of my jabbering until a car journey with friends a couple of weeks ago. I drive a lot, but usually on my own, or with the sacred few people in my life that I feel comfortable enough with to allow my muteness to flow. On this journey, however, I was a passenger, not the driver (which in itself is an interesting experience for me – but that’s another story, another control issue :)), and I realised (several hours later) that I had chewed the ears off my poor friend, her husband and their kids for the full one hour drive. I barely paused for breath! Worse still, it didn’t end when we pulled into the car park. Oh no. My constant chattering continued for the SEVEN HOUR day trip. The only respite my friend got was going off to take part in a half marathon – now that’s some excuse to use just to get away from my tirade of talking! I’ve heard of talking someone into a marathon, but this was ridiculous!

When I get a touch of the talkies, the stuff that comes out is a frenzied mishmash of nonsense, and usually totally incomprehensible to the misfortunate listener. But I’m not loopy. Well, ok, I am :). But this is actually a thing. A disorder called “Pressure of Speech”. It goes hand in hand with another disorder – “Flight of Ideas” – where the stuff whizzing around in your head is going so fast you can’t properly follow it yourself, so good luck to anyone you’re talking to managing to follow it! I can relate to this too; my brain rarely switches off and I sometimes I trip all over my words as I try to get them out. My mouth may well work at nineteen to the dozen, but my brain works at about three times that! What a combination!

This incessant talking of mine divides opinion among my social cluster. Some find it quirky. Others glaze over and revert to the tried and tested nod-and-smile technique. A few even think its adorable. And some find it so hilarious that they get an overwhelming urge to goad me into an outburst of unrelenting gibberish. And me? Well, I find it mortifying! I wanna stop myself. I really do. But it’s like an out-of-body deal. I can see myself getting chat happy, but once it’s in full flow, there’s just no stopping it!

I have a lot of stuff planned over the next couple of months, most of it with people I don’t know in environments where a certain amount of hush is required, so I’m really gonna have to try to reel it in… Hmm. This is gonna be tricky. There is a happy medium between embarrassed silence and running off at the mouth, I’m sure of it. I just haven’t quite found it yet. But it’s out there. And I WILL find it… Ok, I’ll shut up now :).