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Back to School

I've been taking yoga classes off and on since I was in graduate school. I have a really good teacher now in Durham; my wife and I faithfully went to classes in her studio until our kids arrived and our lives became less controlled. Now we are empty-nesters but are careful re COVID (I'm high-risk and my wife works in a hospital geriatric ward) so the prospect of working out together in a crowded studio even with masks isn't appealing. I also have a prosthetic knee which is a hindrance for many yoga activities.

A few months after my surgery back in the summer of 2021 I took private lessons from our teacher specifically addressing flexibility and strength issues for that knee. My school year feels very full with my hour commute each way and I stopped with the beginning of the academic year. Last summer it did not seem like an issue but this summer I have started again with the private lessons.

Yoga attracted me in and of itself because of the discipline and mental and physical benefits, but also because it was an activity that I thought I could do as I got older. I still do maintenance yoga first thing in the morning, with scattered stretches throughout the workday in my office.  I do not want my knee replacement to be a major impediment.

She's a good teacher, been doing this even longer than I have. She quickly identified some flexibility and strength issues for my bad knee, but even more importantly she also identified where I had maintained some skill at yoga with strength and ability to go into various postures. Part of the problem of my knee replacement is that it changed my sense of self and diminished what I felt capable of physically. It was really good to hear an objective assessment that while not at the top was neither at the bottom. 

I wonder if I have this effect on my students; I'll have to be more intentional about conveying it.

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