Since we moved back to Pittsburgh, I had a hard time finding a yoga teacher and practice that I liked. I got spoiled by my yoga teacher in Ohio; she was the best. As a side note, I have her detox tea recipe that she made in another blog here. Check it out, it is pretty tasty and easy to make. After trying out 5 different yoga studios around Pittsburgh, I finally found a teacher that I really liked. I signed up for my first block of classes in late January and went twice in February. Then everything shut down. I just found a great teacher and now I can’t go to yoga because of this damn virus. Luckily, after a few weeks, the studio owner set up Zoom classes and started offering drop-in online classes. As time went on, and businesses still weren’t reopening, she started doing the normal class schedule via Zoom. My Tuesday evening class turned into a Saturday morning class. While I do miss seeing people at the studio and the hard wood floor, I find that my
practice is better at home by myself. I have the feeling and the thoughts of “this is your practice today”, something I never thought of or experienced in the studio. Perhaps feeling the energy of everyone around me in the studio prevented me from digging deeper into myself. And practicing at home by myself allows me to be in my own energy and experience yoga on a more personal level. I don’t know if I would ever have gotten to this conclusion without the damn virus, but I’m happy I did. In some ways, this damn virus isn’t that bad.
Another thing I just started doing right before the quarantine was Quigong Tai Chi. Colleen, the wife of the priest at the Zen Center, just started teaching and she had a class the first Saturday in March. I wanted to try it, so I went to the class. And I loved it! I was planning on going every month and inviting some friends and family along. But right after that first class, the Zen Center shut down. They also got set up with Zoom and had all their services online. Colleen decided she was going to have a ½ hour Tai Chi session before their Wednesday evening service. That worked out perfectly for me! I would log off from work; run my mid-week long run, shower, and then do Tai Chi. It was great! I normally wouldn’t have been able to do that since I run on Wednesday and the Zen center is about 20 - 30 minutes away. Since things have started to open back up, she’s
now teaching at a nearby nature center every Saturday. I’ve been there once so far, and it’s wonderful. We all stand under a giant tree in the shade, 6 feet apart from each other, and practice Tai Chi. Since all my activities are now on Saturday morning, I’m planning on going to each of them every other week.
We only did a Zoom meeting for Monday meditation in May. That was nice. At that point, it was good to see everyone’s face, even though we weren’t in the room together. They opened the space again in June for us, but just a limited amount of people. I went in June and they were planning on having it in July but cancelled because things were getting bad again with the number of virus cases. We were in Florida anyway and I wouldn’t have been able to attend. If you missed my Florida story, click here to read it, it’s pretty good. I went to the meditation in August and it was nice to see everyone and be around people again. We did our normal sit walk sit, then tea and conversation afterward. We just wore masks when we moved about the space.
Zoom meetings aren’t just for extra added life activities. The one other online activity we did during quarantine was have a birthday party for my uncle. His birthday is in April and he held a virtual party on Facebook messenger. The whole family logged on from their house and again, it was nice to see everyone. We all chatted about how we were doing and what we were doing during quarantine. School was still “in” so we talked to my cousins about their experience from schooling from home. They both said it took them about 15 minutes to finish their schoolwork every day and then were pretty much bored the rest of the day. My uncle opened his presents and cards and we all sang happy birthday to him. He had a cake there and they got to enjoy it. My step-dad said that once this is all over, we’re going to get the biggest cake possible and have a real birthday for him and anyone else whose birthday fell during quarantine. I felt a little weird about sending my uncle a card at that time. So I made him a digital one. The reason I felt weird about sending him a card was at that time, it was thought that the virus could live on every surface for a long period of time. And I don’t know if you buy cards like I do, but I pick up and touch a couple different ones until I find the right one. If multiple people were touching cards, and then I touched them, I may pick up the virus or spread it. In my opinion, digital was the way to go. I don’t know if it was true that the virus could live on every surface, but I was doing my best to be as careful as possible.
Thanks for reading this segment of my “This Damn Virus” story. Catch up on past segments here and come back next Wednesday for the next one!
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