Yoga Sundays

My love of Sundays is well documented in this blog.  Search "Sunday" and you'll get some good reading, mostly about how I love to lay around on Sundays, grading and watching football, cooking, and chilling out as I prepare mentally for the school week ahead. (You'll also get one about how much I hate accounting and is maybe the most "first world problems" blog entry I've ever written, though that's not a guarantee...)

Now that I have a new job that doesn't involve frantically grading stacks of essays, a job that doesn't fill me with a sense of impeding dread beginning around 2pm, my Sunday love has a new focus. Of course, it's yoga.

My Sundays now begin and end with yoga.  I teach one class at 8:30am, then go to breakfast with the Beh Freh and her husband.  A trip to Trader Joe's later, I'm either back home or off to yoga class #2.  A few weeks ago I was offered the opportunity to take on a 3rd class, a 5:30pm "prime time" (even though it's a weekend) class.  I went back and forth before taking it; I didn't know if I could handle 3 classes in one day, especially on a Sunday.

One of the things I'm learning as I transition away from teaching high school English is how much of my weekend was spent working even if I was "relaxing."  A teacher's job is done exactly one day a year: the last day of school.  Other than that, even if the papers are graded, there is planning to be done.  Emails to answer.  Curriculum to be written.  Plenty to fill 25 hours a day.  I didn't realize until I didn't have the guilt anymore how much of my mental energy went to making myself feel bad that I wasn't working harder...that I even had a stack to grade, because I should have already graded it.  What a mess.

So, now I spend my Sundays not feeling guilty.  Instead, I'm so grateful to be able to, in some small way, help prepare people for their week ahead.   So that they can manage their own stuff, whatever that may be.  I still work as many hours teaching yoga on Sundays as I used to when I was grading papers.  But, rather that feel like I'm not working hard enough, I'm able to breathe and move.

And that, friends, catapults Sundays into a whole new, beautiful, realm of awesome.