I’ve taken up Bikram yoga again after a long hiatus. This is the kind of yoga that is as much spiritual enterprise as physical practice, because most of the time you’re doing it you wish you were dead. You’re in a room heated to just a few degrees below sauna, the instructors are merciless, the poses kick your butt, and - given the “Look good naked” slogan that some of the studios use - most of the time you’re surrounded by limber waifs in yoga cute shorts. Even though it seems like I see more older people doing Bikram these days, it’s still the sort of thing where when I see someone with varicose veins and a poochy belly I feel like saying “thank you!”
Anyway, the Bikram near-death experience is very instructive. I lie in savasana and think, “I am dead.” My whole life, I should just be getting ready to be dead: for instance, finally clearing out my folder of junk mail and important financial statements so that when I’m dead my loved ones won’t have to go through all that crap.
Most of the poses I am happy just to survive. But occasionally I get some additional nuance beyond just life and death. Standing Bow Pulling pose is the one I usually fall while trying to do, but now I like it because I think it’s the best one for writing.
The reason is, in order to achieve balance in the pose you have to charge your body forward (the instructors always say that: “charge” - like we’re the yoga cavalry) and kick back at the same time. If you don’t kick back as hard as you go forward, you fall. The importance of kicking back while you’re going forward made me think about my novel and how I really needed to think more about the forces of opposition within it (well, also, my editor may have mentioned something about that). For the story to work, my antagonist needs to be going just as strongly in his direction as my dear little protagonist goes in hers.
So I’ve been focusing on my antagonist and trying to get to the heart of a villainy that makes sense.
