Last night at the yoga class we were sitting with our backs upright and the soles of our feet pressed together. “Now, this is the tailor pose,” said the yoga lady. She keeps up a bright but rambling monologue about the various poses, and what their Indian names are, and what they’re good for, and what you should be doing with your belly button, and how, at the same time, you should be keeping that imaginary hundred-dollar-bill clenched in your heinie, to paraphrase her old dance instructor, who used to dance on Broadway, and so on. It might sound annoying, but really it’s very nice. Anyway, the tailor pose. “This is a very good pose to keep the urinary tract healthy,” says the yoga lady. “And it’s called the Tailor Pose because tailors in India used to do it. You know, to keep from getting urinary infections. There’s an old legend, actually, about tailors using this pose to keep their urinary tracts healthy. A lot of the poses in yoga have legends about them, actually.”
First I just listened. Then I thought, “she’s making this up.” Then I considered giving her the benefit of the doubt, because maybe this stuff IS true, or, at the very least, there are true things about it. I like thinking that perhaps there’s Hindu folklore about the village tailor who made the straightest seams and, alas, the crookedest streams. If anyone cares to enlighten me on the subject, please do so!
I think I have lost another two pounds finally. Oh, goody, my metabolism woke up and now I can stop poking it with a stick.
We went to the Brookfield Zoo again on Sunday, for the holiday lights as well as for more traumatic video moments like this one. And for the Mold–A–Ramas, which are much happier ways to see animals being born. (And doesn’t “Mold-A-Rama” sound like the name of a yoga pose? Something where you press your hands together and visualize a warm plastic object between your palms?) Anyway, since the zoo can’t exactly stick Santa hats on all the meerkats and shrews and pygmy hippos, they had special holiday lights projected on the walls of some of the outdoor habitats—these red and green and snowflake-shaped things that turned slowly in kaleidoscopic patterns. It was hard not to imagine the Kodiak bears passing a bong back and forth, but it was very pretty all the same. And, yes, very Christmasy. I’m beginning to feel it.
Tailor Pose! Please describe in more detail. We could all enjoy a clean urinary tract! Would keep those dollar bills away from the heinie…not too clean-the bills get around! 🙂
Ohmigod! Your blog is still here! 🙂
I just finished Chapter 19 of your book, and finally thought to see if you still kept this up..
(btw – i totally LOLed at “big faggy bag of man cosmetics”… your friends are a hoot)
Looking forward to the rest of the book, partly just for entertainment, partly for motivation to get my big fat ass to the new gym I just joined.
I’ve done yoga before – but could it really make me feel as pumped at Taeboing with Billy Blanks does? I have a Susan Powter yoga dvd I’ve never done yet (no classes at the new gym, just machines and weights).
cheers
Diana
Yup, it’s called Tailor Pose, but I’ve never heard that explanation. My undrestanding is that hatha ypga developed because the yogis needed to stretch in the middle of meditating all day. Then they realized the asanas (poses) themselves were beneficial, and developed them further.
I love the notion of Kodiak bears passing the pipe.
i like to imagine that pose names are made up and agreed upon at a yoga instructors national convention: the air is humming with the motors of juice machines and wheat grass clippers, nike and puma are hawking the latest innovations in yoga shoes and yoga hats, and everywhere you look, it’s shoulderblades and collarbones.
Mold-a-rama sounds more like what’s happening in my crisper drawer!
Hello! I’m from the southwest suburbs but I’m living in Kansas now and can’t make it home for Chrtistmas this year. Your description of Brookfield Zoo at the holidays makes me feel like I’m right there. I can almost smell the mold-o-rama machine in action.
I read your book a couple months ago and loved it! That also made me feel a little homesick with all the Chicagoland references. But the book was awesome and it made me want to write to you but I was afraid you were too cool for me.
Mold-O-Rama–neat!
There’s one of those machines in the late lamented “Wonderfalls” show, but I’d never heard of one in real life.
Well, I’ve been taking yoga classes for about 2 years and I have to say, I’ve never heard of either the tailor pose, or the hundred dollar bill in the heiney thing. In fact, during some poses, we are told (by a few different instructors) NOT to clench our butts. So, maybe you all in the middle of the country practice a different strain of yoga than we do on the East Coast. But I must say the bill in the heiney thing DOES sound like something a dance instructor might say (I don’t know from personal experience, though- never took dance classes).
Although I enjoy many things about yoga, I am quite skeptical about some of the alleged benefits, such as the “detoxing” or that a pose can prevent a urinary infection. But, that’s me.
As an aside… I used to get those infections frequently. An old lady doctor told me how to prevent them- no matter how tired or otherwise inert you might be, get up and pee after…. you know. And THAT works. (Sorry if I’m giving TMI on your blog).
I now live on the west coast, but your reference to the mold-a-rama brought me right back the the Brookfield of my youth. Do you still have to carry them around up-side-down for a while after they come out of the mold? That was kind of a drag. I had hoped there’d been advances in mold-a-rama technology since the ’70s, but the photo makes me think not.
Great. Now I’m going to start looking for next years Christmas cards and I’m not going to rest until I find one with Meerkats wearing Santa hats.
The name of the pose is Baddhakonasana and from the sanskrit it translates as Bound angle pose stimulates the heart and improves circulation in the entire body like a lot of the yoga posturesit alleviates stiffness in groinhips and hamstring muscles,the upright posture of the trunk tones the spine abdominal and pelvic organs.