Feels Like Home to Me

My favorite moment in hot yoga comes right before my least favorite moment in hot yoga. After a greuling, yet purifying 85 minutes of bending, stretching and balancing in 108 degree temperature with 70% humidity, we get to lay down and take a Savasana (corpse pose).

At this point Suzanne or John (depends who’s teaching) talks you through some relaxation and then (here it comes!) they open the two french doors of the studio, which lead to an outside courtyard. As I lay there, heart beating all over my body, I start to feel the *cool* Tallahassee air trickling its way into the studio, over our bodies. That’s the moment.

Without fail, the first tingling of the fresh air touching me brings a smile to my face. Because, it feels like home to me.

I spent the summer of 2006 in London, living in Flat 13 with some of my best friends. In Flat 13, we didn’t have air conditioning. It was on the fourth floor of a building with no elevator and crickety, unbalanced stairs. Some days, when the entrance to our building was locked [don't ask], we’d have to go in the building next door, walk down two flights of stairs, do some underground manuevering, walk up two flights, go through a maze, then face the four flights to get home.

Needless to say, when carrying groceries or after a few cocktails, this was no easy feat [but sometimes it really was so fun, especially with the cocktails part].

But at the end of all the stealth moves to get home, there was the promise of windows to open. Hot and defeated, the cool city air always changed our outlook. At night we’d fall asleep with our windows open, listening to lullabies of London’s noise and we loved it. It was our summer home. Home to a summer I will never forget.

So if you’re ever walking around during Savasana and catch a glimpse of the curious grin on my face, know that it is because I’ve been taken back to one of the best times of my life. And I’ll take anything that takes me there.

Court, Me & KJ in Oxford. We happened to be there on graduation day. We rented a boat and cruised down the river with a bottle of wine in tow. I steered us straight into the wall behind us and a chunk of it fell into the river.

Court and I in front of the Thames river on one of our first days there.

We took a 9-hour ferry to Ibiza. Courtney was sick and we had to take her to the clinic. I got to translate. Here we are after her release.

PS- If youre wondering what my least favorite moment in yoga is, it’s a minute into the Savasana. Usually we take a 5-minute long corpse pose and about 1 minute into it, I’m ready to go. I get very ADD laying there playing dead.