This summer I started doing rope yoga at a studio in downtown Ann Arbor. It's been a great experience! The exercises focus on parts of my body that are normally neglected in my routine at the gym, like the lower back and spine. And because the movements are so slow and controlled, I frequently experience a sense of calm while performing them.

This feeling of peace is very special to me. The anxieties that nag me in my everyday life - the way my body looks, friction in my romantic life, fears about finding my niche in the graduate program I'm about to enter - wash away and I feel more in charge of myself for a little while. For me, doing yoga delivers a quiet ecstasy, like in this passage from James Schuyler's poem "A photograph" -

When I woke there was
just time to make the
train to a country dinner
and talk about ecstasy.
Which I think comes in
two sorts: that which you
know "Now I'm ecstatic"
like my strange scream
last Friday night. And
another kind, that you
know only in retrospect:
"Why, that joy I felt
and didn't think about
when his feet were in
my lap, or when I looked
down and saw his slanty
eyes shut, that too was
ecstasy. Nor is there
necessarily a downer from
it."

xo
Scott