Day 26: "Stretch"
Yusuke lounged on my bed with my headphones over his ears, rocking out to the latest Megallica album while playing some ferocious air guitar. It should be noted that he was listening to my records because he was too cheap to buy a record deck of his own. The record on the player was also mine, and he had encouraged its purchase with gusto. Anything I owned, he owned, but ours wasn't a totally one-sided relationship. I inherited his too-small shirt and he mooched off my record collection with impunity. This was how we balanced things.
And speaking of balance: While Yusuke the Moocher pretended to shred a sick-ass guitar solo to the roar of an imaginary crowd, I stood in tree pose on a rubber yoga mat in front of my desk. I tried my damndest not to pay him any mind as I regulated my breathing and paid close attention to the twitch of my muscles, my relationship with balance carefully cultivated by the relationship I had with my muscles. The more intently I listened to them, felt each little tensing and relaxation of the muscles in my feet and legs and back, the better I'd be able to hold my pose.
It was with this same care that I transitioned out of tree pose and into a lunge, hands stretched high over my head. I held this pose for a long time, breathing slowly and with intentional depth, and from there I bent backward and fell (in an extremely controlled way, of course) into an arching backbend. My hands pressed flat to the rubber mat; my feet did the same, limbs stretched taut as I once more held the pose. Breathing was harder when I was upside down, so I closed my eyes and tried not to listen to the mattress creak under Yusuke's weight, nor the distant and tinny sound of a Megallica song pumping through the headphones he wore. I breathed with my belly and diaphragm; a signer's breath, and the breath of athletes. My stomach expanded toward the ceiling on an inhale as my diaphragm dropped, making room for breath, and then it pulled back in toward my arched spine as I exhaled, air pushed from my lungs by my diaphragm again. Again and again I breathed, eyes closed so I could concentrate, attuned to every creak of muscle fiber and every ounce of indrawn air.
Something moved over my stomach.
It was light. A subtle weight, sitting atop my stomach. Maybe the waistband of my spandex pants rolling? I ignored it, inhaling again, but then the sensation on my stomach vanished. Something hit the mat beneath me with a hollow 'pop!' My eyes flew open; my neck ached when I craned my head to look at the mat, confused.
Upon the mat sat a tape dispenser.
The tape dispenser that had formerly sat upon my desk.
Yusuke let out a chortle. When I looked up I found him staring at me from over the side of the bed, headphones worn around his neck, and even looking at him upside-down I could tell he wore a mischievous grin on his face. He had a pencil and a stapler and a few other odds and ends beside him, all I recognized from my desk.
"… were you just putting crap on my stomach?" I asked.
"You're working on your balance." Yusuke held out the stapler. "So am I."
Yusuke, with the care of a person building a castle from a desk of cards, reached out and set the stapler on my stomach. He stacked an eraser on top of it, and then he stacked a pencil case, but before he could add a keyring to the pile, I took a deep breath and dislodged his handiwork. It fell off my stomach to patter on the rubber mat, and with a groan I let my backbend collapse. I fell onto the pile of fallen office supplies in a heap that dig painfully into the curvature of my spine.
"I'm never doing yoga in front of you again," I said.
But Yusuke only laughed. "Not the first time you've said that. Somehow doubt it'll be the last."
NOTES: I love these two bonding. Yusuke's such a little shit and I love him very much. Also this was 1000% inspired by those videos of cats climbing on their owners as they do yoga.