Opinion

Nuala McCann: A golden weekend with old friends is the WD40 of life

Nuala McCann

Nuala McCann

Nuala McCann is an Irish News columnist and writes a weekly radio review.

Nuala enjoyed her yoga weekend, especially the cocktails in the afternoon...
Nuala enjoyed her yoga weekend, especially the cocktails in the afternoon... Nuala enjoyed her yoga weekend, especially the cocktails in the afternoon...

IT was a weekend for polishing up on our chakras.

Take that as a euphemism for eating your bodyweight in prawn cocktail, pink duck and espresso mousse and stretching like old cats in the pale yellow winter sunshine.

We were on a yoga weekend in a fancy hotel – a step away from the everyday – any excuse and I'll drink to that.

The body tends to seize up like a rusty gate – use it or lose it - but a golden weekend with old friends is the WD40 of life.

Yoga friends see you at your best and at your worst – that effortless triangle... that upside-down feeling with your belly hanging out of your leggings.

They see you with a face like a roasted tomato; they hear you moan in agony.

Yoga with ropes puts a whole new meaning to that old chestnut: "I'm a little tied up at the moment," and if you can do pigeon and eagle then you have my undying admiration.

There is no judgment – well, only a little and you keep it to yourself.

Albert Camus said: "Everything I know about morality and the obligations of men, I owe it to football."

I owe it to yoga. I have learned to keep my eyes on my own mat – a difficult lesson in life.

You do discover things about yourself – take my crepe bandage phobia.

Nuala enjoyed her yoga weekend, especially the cocktails in the afternoon...
Nuala enjoyed her yoga weekend, especially the cocktails in the afternoon... Nuala enjoyed her yoga weekend, especially the cocktails in the afternoon...

Our teacher got us to wrap them around our heads, covering our eyes so that we could better use our other senses.

But I looked around and felt I'd been parachuted into a room of First World War patients. I ran from the room.

My yoga pals called me 'The Irish Patient' after that.

I've been neglecting things recently – and giving in to the curmudgeonly.

All that loving kindness has its limitations.

Last weekend, at the end of a long hard day's sun salutation; cat; cow; eagle and twist yerself up and stand on one hand why don't you... we had relaxation.

This is where you get to lie on the floor wrapped in blankets and listen as the teacher leads you through a guided meditation and, if you're lucky, a gong bath.

There's always a snorer – if you don't hear them, then that means it's you.

Lying there, trying hard to relax, there was only one question troubling me: What's the ancient Tibetan for "stop snoring"?

This proved the fly in the leek and potato veloute (I had that for starters on the second day) of the weekend..

There we lay body scanning – left toe, ball of the foot, shin – and the snorer was right beside me.

The snorer fell asleep at the inner left heel and snored so hard that my loving kindness got up and slipped out of the room leaving me with inner child on tantrum mode.

The yoga teacher had said gently that if we fell asleep it was because this is what the body needed.

Not mine, not mine.

My report card for the weekend may have read: "Could do better."

But we had a great laugh. Yoga people do strawberry daiquiris and dark 'n' stormys in the afternoon.

The conversation turns in all sorts of weird directions.

Our green organic friend has other friends who, she says, are "fierce recyclers".

Naturally they donated their bodies to medical research – the ultimate recycling.

Only the gift of the body was received gratefully but then sent back again as they were full up.

That was hard, she said.

The talk turned to all sorts of endings – woodland burials and ash scattering.

The new ideal for recyclers involves special fungal spores that break a body down pronto.

Enough of that - there is plenty of life in us old dogs left.

We're all heading rapidly to the retired stage of life.

Some of us do it with grace and tenacity.

They take hip and knee replacements in their stride – defy the gods of time, still look glamorous; still have fun.

So my dog head down is no longer a thing of beauty and I have to accept that I am no longer the 19-year-old who could stand on her head in the middle of the room minus supports for half an hour at a time.

But the joy is still there; my third eye flickers and glows in the dark like a lit cigarette.

So on we go... saluting the sun; breathing to the pits of our beings; laughing ourselves alive.