February 4

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Looking east through West Park.  On the way to yoga (about 5:30 pm).  It was snowing.  I used the phone.  The camera has a lens that extends out from the camera body when you turn it on, and retracts when you turn it off.  When the snow (or rain) is coming down, any moisture that gets on the side of the lens will end up inside the camera.  Unless I have an umbrella, which I did not have.

Choosing to use the phone rather than the camera may be stupid.  The camera is old, and wasn't very expensive.  The phone is new, and probably costs more than the camera would have cost, when new.  But the phone doesn't stick parts of itself out into the weather.  It *seems* less vulnerable to me, to snowflakes or light rain, but I don't know if that's true or not.



For reasons I don't begin to fathom, they plow the other path through the park, but not this one.  I believe they don't want to drive heavy equipment on the boardwalk/bridge over the pond, and that is completely understandable, but why not plow this section of the (asphalt) path?  It's not like they don't have a zillion person-hours available for plowing.........................................





But there.

Let's abandon any thoughts of plowing, take a deep breath, and enjoy the pretty snowy park.

The Wednesday night level-1 yoga class has a bunch of young people in it.  On the 4th (probably due to the snow?) we had a small class. Only seven of us.  The average age was lower than I've ever seen there, I think.  Usually I'm a fairly typical age.  Last night, there was someone else my age, someone else a bit older, and then the next oldest person was in his 30s, I'd guess.  Then there were three 20-somethings, I think, and one teenager (or maybe he's very early 20s).  And with three men, the male/female ratio was closer to 50/50 than I've ever seen there.

It made for an interesting class.  The young people are all new (or pretty new) to yoga, but they are healthy and strong.  We did a bunch of hard stuff that she never does with new people in class.  Several things we did were relatively easy for me (my body happens to find them easy).  So the class was strenuous, but in a good way (in my humble estimation).

On the 4th, I finally got together the gumption to tell my teacher that I am not going to be doing headstands, period, due to my osteopenic neck, and to ask for an accommodation.  She thinks I'm wrong (should be challenging my neck with the intention of helping it be stronger), but happily showed me a way to have my shoulders bear my weight (two rubbermaid stepstools).  It's odd to have most of my body weight on my shoulders, but at least they don't have my spinal cord running through them.  !!!

My position is -- if some of my bones are going to crumble from bearing a biologically/evolutionarily unexpected amount of body weight, let's not have them be bones with my spinal cord inside them!

So far I think I am willing to do this shoulder-stand headstand, and having me do it at all makes her happier, so maybe this is good all around.

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