The above is a picture of a sad yoga mat. It is sad because of its present status, a prop for photoshoot. My yoga mat thinks ( yes , it has an independent mind of its own) that it has in its power to make me connect with my inner self ! This has been my mat from my initial days of practicing yoga. The mat has seen better days of glory. It has been with me in my journey of learning and relearning how to bend my ego and spine both together.
Once upon a time the mat had had a place of respect in our house. The minute it unfurled a whiff of fresh air and positivity would fill the room. Alas, those days of the past is like a distant dream for the mat. For sometime now my mat has been living under the bed, sharing a dark space with a ladder, a long forgotten briefcase, one pair of lost chappal, and a folding (one leg broken) laptop table; out of sight- out of mind. A life of total ignominy. To add more misfortune some spiders made a comfortable studio in the hollow cylindrical belly of the mat and were making their own web series. This web story was perhaps the last straw to my mat’s patience. It decided to finally reach out to me.
As I wrote earlier, my mat has some special powers! It has the power to connect with me. With years of having practiced yoga together our connect is quite strong. I could almost hear the mat cry out in pain and indignity. And as I bend down low to recover the mat from under the bed my back muscles groaned and moaned in protest. So one thing was clear, my once flexible body had become stiff and lazy. The muscles had forgotten to stretch and bend.
The only Surya namaskar my body had done in the last two years was to stand in the balcony with folded hands saluting the 9.am sun. The only Tree pose I had done was to stand under a tree and take a nice photo. The only Baal- Asan was to behave like a child filled with impatience. And my all time favorite, the Sab-Asan was performed on the bed. Now that I have made my reader count all my follies, the picture is amply clear that I had not done any yoga for two years and counting. There is no connect with my inner peace, my restless mind is wandering, and my physical body is moaning and groaning,
The mat insisted to be pulled out from under the bed, and I obeyed. But my escapist mind promptly found other uses for the mat. It became a prop for photography, It became a place to sit on with the morning paper and coffee, and last but not the least the mat became my muse for another blog.
My mat is still talking to me. It is humming in my ears that Yoga as we popularly call it is actually Yog in Sanskrit. Yog, meaning connect ! Connect of the mind with the body, connect of the mind with the soul, connect of the mind with the universe beyond ourselves. The concept of yog stretches much beyond the stretching of a few muscles and limbs. It is an ignorant and vain mat, proud of its bright red beauty and will not shut up till I transform my lifestyle once again and connect with my mind. I guess it is time to say “Thank you yog mat for your mantra”.
sangeeta chakladar 