When the heat of the day accumulates in the house, by dinnertime all the stuffiness and noise and grumpy tiredness simmers within until we’re all snapping at each other like alligators. Which is how I found myself in the front yard one evening doing yoga with Child Harbat. Full disclosure: this began not with the well-thought-out plan of introducing my daughter to meditation and stretching, but from a necessity for her to show me her cartwheel skills outside rather than in the living room near lamps and framed pictures. One of the benefits of a dry climate is the sudden relief of heat that comes with dusk, like a pressure valve released as the sun plummets into the horizon. CH and I set out some blankets and she tried cartwheels, unsuccessfully, and some diving somersaults, also unsuccessfully. So we transitioned to yoga which was better suited to iron-hard ground and limited gymnastic experience. She showed me downward facing dog and some other multi-step poses that were either from the Level 18 Master Yoga Sutra, or she made them up. We got talking about flexibility after I explained that I couldn’t fold my feet sideways and stow them under my legs as she could. I asked if she could get into a full lotus position and showed proper excitement and pride when she did. With a little primer on how to hold her hands, she was ready for enlightenment. The owl on her dress looks like it has already achieved total consciousness. Or it’s completely stoned.
Writer, architect, father, husband.
Oooooooohhhhhhhmmmmmmm.
I think we’ll have to try that with our two youngest. 🙂
Weather here is extremely hot (for UK) and like you mentioned above, tempers are fraying and everybody is irritable. Sadly we don’t get the relief of cool evenings as lately it has been in the mid 20’s even at midnight!
I think this will also work when you’re sitting in a bathtub full of ice. For those heat wave days it’s like the opposite of Ashtanga yoga!