Heart opening

My front-body feels incredibly sore today. I guess we’ve been doing a lot of heart openers in yoga (appropriate for Valentine’s Day!), which tends to mean lots of backbends — and I am really naturally bad at backbends. I have a reasonably flexible lower back but a terribly tight chest and mid/upper-back, which includes tight shoulders. When I was a little girl in ballet class, all the other little girls could get into what we then called “making baskets”, but I couldn’t even get close. Until December of last year I couldn’t get into even a modified version of Ustrasana, and until this past Wednesday I couldn’t straighten my arms in Bridge. Backbends feel so good when you can do them, I’ve been really expanding into them every time we’ve done them in class… and that probably explains the soreness. But I do kind of like the soreness; it’s always interesting and gratifying to be sore in a place I didn’t even know I could get sore!

We had a very pleasant Valentine’s Day yesterday. I went to yoga in the morning, then Erik and I had a healthy lunch at Mäni’s*, followed by some packing, reading, showering, etc, before our partner yoga workshop in the evening (followed by another healthy meal at California Vegan). The workshop was every bit as delicious as last year’s, though as Erik and I are both more accomplished partner-yogis and massage-givers now, we didn’t learn quite as much. At the workshop we made a commitment to each other to carve out time like this for ourselves every day, instead of just once in a while. Erik and I are luckier than a lot of couples, in that we both still like each other and we get to spend a lot of time together every day. Nevertheless, it’s so easy, when you’ve been in a relationship for a while, to stop really talking to each other on a day-to-day basis. Conversations consist of the “What should we have for dinner?” and “Tomorrow we’d better run these errands” type of talk. At the yoga workshop, we had these two hours set aside to do nothing but look into each other’s eyes, give and receive massages, and be together. The difference in the quality of that time spent together and the quality of our usual evening routine is so vast. I hate the term “quality time” but that’s really what it was, and that is what we need. So that’s our commitment to each other for this next year at the very least — quality wind-down time together every night, with computers off, a moratorium on boring grown-up planning talk, and a focus on just each other and our relationship.

In other news of love, I received so many wonderful replies to my annual Valentine, I’ve been glowing with gratitude for all my friends. I started making these cards in 2004 specifically to try to bring more love to the holiday — rather than the bitterness and disappointment so many of us feel on that day! — and every year my loved ones remind me that the Crusader for Love is doing her job. I’m so happy to know it, and so happy to do Valentines instead of Christmas cards. 😉

*Let this be a lesson to us not to go to places that are even remotely trendy on Valentine’s Day. The place was packed with couples, some of them quite disgusting (I’ve always hated hand-holding across tables, but one guy was holding his lady’s hand and kissing it at the same time. Eeyucch!!).