On The Mark: A little mindfulness can get minds off Covid

Though you can practice alone, even in a small space with minimal props, yoga is more pleasurable and probably better exercise when done with others or in classes. I’ve been doing yoga for more than half a lifetime. I’m grateful to the teachers, quite a variety of them, with whom I’ve studied wherever I lived. I have enhanced both my strength and flexibility by rolling out my mat several times a week, sometimes with friends or relations. Once you’ve worked consistently with one or more teachers, you can walk yourself through the practice by memory, varying it as you see fit.

After moving to Cromwell full-time, in 2009, I was surprised when my husband, Rod Walli, returned from a men’s spiritual retreat and stated, with some joy, that he wanted to do yoga with me. It’s been good for both of us.

In 2013, I requested the use of the Cromwell Pavilion to offer yoga once a week, agreeing to a modest annual payment. I purchased enough yoga gear (mats, bolsters, blocks, belts, blankets) for participants, storable in the roomy Pavilion closets we share for other event equipment.

Covid put an end to our sessions sometime last year. We all agreed we’d rather be safe. But I found myself wishing for instruction and turned to the web to find out if any of my former teachers were offering online classes. Yes. A remarkable woman, Angela Farmer, now in her 80s, who used to hold women’s yoga retreats in California and now lives on the island of Lesbos in Greece, was offering them through Zoom. And my teacher and friend Gopali also began offering classes from her New Jersey studio. I signed up for both sometime in the early fall and have been joining ever since.

The two classes could not be more different, and in that, they are complementary. Gopali leads a strenuous yoga, with an emphasis on stretching and alignment, using extensive props including chairs and walls. Her class is live, with small images of each of us on the screen. She often gives us individual feedback on our poses. Angela, in contrast, has developed an interior practice, focusing on opening up the joints, twisting, and paying attention to the breath. Although, as in Gopali’s class, we can see the other participants, Angela is not monitoring us or giving us individual feedback. She also arranges for access to the class tapes for a week, so that if we want to revisit a portion, we can. And I have.

In our Cromwell group, we’ve had a range of participants, from age 93 to grade-school kids, including men. We began convening again last fall, with the agreement that we’d all arrive and leave masked and take home our yoga gear. It isn’t necessary to mask during the sessions because we’re well-spaced out. I adjust the practice each time to participants, careful if someone is having knee or other problems. Recently, I seem to have injured my left arm rotator cuff from falling on skis, and so I’ve been avoiding poses that are not helpful for that. My practice includes time-honored stretches like the warrior pose, extended side-angle pose, downward dog, shoulder workouts, forward bends, spinal twists, and more. We eventually lie down on our mats, working the abs and doing gentle backbends, hip openers, and spinal twists. Then a relaxation that invites every tension in the body to release while focusing on breathing at your own pace.

Before ending each session, I like to read or recite a poem for everyone, often something of Mary Oliver’s. I then invite all to gently emerge by turning to the side, and bringing up the head the very last thing. We meet Mondays, 11 a.m. to noon at the Cromwell Pavilion. If you have any questions, please call me at 218-428-3300 or email me at [email protected].