Kazan — summer 2010

This morning I went to a 7:00 a.m. yoga class here in Kazan. I can hardly tell you how good I feel right now. My body needed it.

Yoga House is a fully-equipped Iyengar studio. The decor is peaceful and artistically elegant, and every inch is radiantly clean, which is a delight because lots of public places in Russia are somewhat grimy. The gentleman who received my payment knew I was a first-timer, so he showed me the dressing room, gave me a locker key, and pointed out the room the class would be held in. The men's dressing room had the most beautiful two-stall shower set up I've ever seen in a yoga studio.

The class was taught by Faniya "Faya" Mingalieva. I have done essentially no yoga for a year, so I needed to start back with a beginning class. Ohmigosh, no stamina at all. And there are all sorts of rotator muscles that I've hardly used, and let me tell you, I can feel them now. And there are a bunch of phrases she used that I've just never had to use before in Russian, like лопатки внутрь 'draw your shoulder blades in' and колени подтяните 'pull up your kneecaps' and пальцы вытяните 'spread your fingers'. I hope to make this a regular part of my schedule for the rest of the summer. Plus the Russians regard 7:00 a.m. as a barbarous hour, so this class is the cheapest they offer, and that appeals to the Scottish in me.

Oh, I do want to whine about one thing. Faya had us do this toe exercise that must have been invented by Satan himself. Oof, I hated it. I understand its usefulness, but, damn, it hurt.

October 2010 update: actually, the toe exercise fractured my leg. I limped till the end of the summer. It didn't seem serious enough to go to the doctor in Russia, but when I got home I had it x-rayed, and sure enough, a fracture.