Yoga

I wanted to go in to yoga one last time before my long trip. A friend had suggested that it will do me good, especially having to sit down in a cramped space for over 16hours (even if it is broken up into two sectors...)

So I went in, and was just on time. The place was already quite crowded, surprisingly for a 16.30 class, as I assumed people would still be working (well, I'm not...). I found a place in the back, squeezed between two middle aged ladies, and had a really (really) big man next to me. I looked at the image in the mirror in front of us, and it looked like an extreme version of Laurel (me) and Hardy (him).

The class began, and I slowly got used to the heat. The clock counted down... 90 minutes to go till the end, and the instructor's voice urged us to exert all of our effort and energies. Since I started, I do feel much better about myself every time I finish. Even if not physically, from all the sweating and stretching, then at least mentally I feel I accomplish something significant after every class.

More than half way into the class, with some quarter of an hour left, I started to feel breathless. I never felt that way before, and as hard as I tried to follow the postures and the instructions, I couldn't. I was light headed and felt nauseated. Not like I wanted to throw up, but just like I have just gone for a spin without realising it, and am now reeling under the aftermath of it all....

So I had to stop and just lie down for a moment. Gradually, I felt my hands numb... a creeping sensation of numbness climbed up my arms and into my fingers, slowly and slowly taking control of my hands (right one was the worst)... Soon I last all senses of my hands and fingers. I tried to curl them, to control them, but just felt pain, tingling, bursts of electricity and impulses shooting and running throughout my hands and fingers. I felt overwhelmed, like I had lost control of my hands, like I had lost my hands. All the while, the voice of the instructor droned one, and we were already one posture further and closer toward the end of the class...

Then suddenly, an imaged flashed across my mind (terrible, since in yoga we're supposed to be concentrated fully on the breathing and movements of the body...) The image of my mum's hand, and my fingers reaching out to touch hers. I could see my mum lying there, asleep, after complaining about the numbness and pain she felt in her fingers and hands, because of the sideeffects of the chemo therapy. So is this excruciating sensation what it feels like? This pain, this severe numbness and inability to control the fingers... is this what mum has to go through every time she has poison injected into her body?

I closed my eyes, and tried to surpress the the pain and tingling sensations. Tried to watch those sensations, and thought of mum, and her ordeals...