French Yoga

Tonight, as mandated by my abroad program, I attended my first weekly "club" activity–vinyasa yoga, which is a style of yoga that tends to make you sweat since you get into some pretty intense poses, ect. Take that as you may, but for someone who's pretty happy already and doesn't need to spend an hour practicing breathing, it's a perfect style for me.

When I got to the studio, I talked with an older French woman who basically works there, it made me feel good to be able to converse easily with an everyday French woman out and about! I found out later that she's basically an instructor, but, don't hold your breath, she was not the best. No, compared to the nearly-naked skinny yoga guru man two mats down from me, she was normal. As we waited for the class to start, he started warming up himself in child's pose. To say his breathing was intense would be an incredible understatement. His warm-up breathing was so strong and intense that I thought there was an underwater oxygen tank in the room. He provided for some good entertainment for me as we did some of the side poses. I couldn't help but think to myself where I had seen someone like him before...

Yoga in French was way cooler than in the US. First of all, you can tune out the instructor if you want to "be with yourself," since you probably won't know half of her vocabulary for a yoga class, and for the other half of what she says, it's like a biology body parts quiz. Parfait!

Quick self-plug: I am continuing to write for the Denisonian, Denison's student newspaper for which I was the managing editor before going abroad. The website was just updated today and my "foreign correspondant" column was posted. I alternate writing in with another editor who is studying in Copenhagen this semester, so the column's title "The Denisonian Does Europe" is suiting. Here is the direct link to my first column in case you're interested, the next will be written for next Tuesday's issue.
http://media.www.denisonian.com/media/storage/paper1253/news/2010/09/14/Forum/The-Denisonian.Does.Europe-3933725.shtml

XOXO, c