I've been taking a lot of yoga classes as part of my month in Florida (escaping part of the dreary Winter in Indiana) and I had a funny, distracting thing happen the other night in class.
I was in my yoga ‘zone’ and was lying on my back when the teacher told us to stretch our arms up overhead and stretch out long. Of course, it felt amazing. Then she said to bring our arms down by our sides. As I did this, I could feel a hair wrapped around my fingers (it was a hot yoga class so I was sweaty). I started fidgeting and trying to get the hair off my hand. Then the teacher said to sit up and reach our toes. So I did. We then lifted our legs up towards the ceiling. I then felt the hair wrapped across my toes. When we brought our knees in to our chest, I reached for the hair, which I caught with my hand. I then spent several seconds, which seemed like minutes, trying to rub my hand on the floor, my mat, etc. to try to get rid of the hair. The thought then crossed my mind, was this my hair or someone else’s? This whole exchange with the hair lasted several minutes total but took me out of my yoga ‘zone’. Some of my airy, fairy yoga friends may have said to “let the hair go from my mind”, “to be one with hair”, etc. I honestly knew I had to ditch the hair because it was distracting me.
So I thought after class, was this a lesson? Ultimately I decided that not every distraction in yoga class is a lesson. Sometimes a hair wrapped around your fingers or toes is just a hair and it had to go!
