New year's lessons, with a side of peas

THOMPSON E-mail: Click here

By SANDRA THOMPSON

© St. Petersburg Times, published January 6, 2001

On January 1, the morning after the night before and the coldest day so far of this unusually cold winter, Maggie McClain was giving a yoga class.

It seemed like a good idea to go, especially now. The election that never ended and the economic downturn that threatens to become a recession, plus hours spent returning, exchanging and price-adjusting Christmas gifts, made it seem wise to consider some different values.

There weren't many people outside, a couple of runners -- in shorts! -- and walkers on the Bayshore, no one in downtown Tampa except those who have no inside place to go, and I-275 -- the reason I'd kept away from this place I'd heard so many good things about -- was actually driveable. No one on Busch Boulevard, but at the house toward the end of a dead-end street on the Hillsborough River, the circular driveway was full of cars, no spaces left.

I pulled in, blocking several other cars. The front porch was littered with shoes -- sandals, athletic shoes, deck shoes. Inside, in a space that could not be more beautiful, overlooking tall oaks and the river, the yoga room was practically wall to wall with more than 30 people.

The class was free, an annual gift from Maggie, who directs TreeHouse Yoga, which offers nearly 20 for-pay yoga classes per week, as well as spirituality and healing groups one may attend for a donation, or not. It is also her home.

She is a slender woman in black pants and lavender long-sleeved T-shirt, her silver hair in a ponytail. She is smiling and effervescent, full of the life force. She can also bend over like a paperclip.

We were called on to go around in a circle and introduce ourselves.

Most gave their first names and said they were here today because they wanted to start the New Year out right, on a healthier, more spiritual note.

A young redheaded woman who could stretch her limbs like the dancer in those Jules Fieffer cartoons said, "I'm Heather, and I like free yoga."

Everyone laughed.

Many of the group -- mostly women but several men, all ages -- were devoted regulars; a few of us had come for the first time.

"Breathe in, yes. Breathe out, thank you," Maggie began.

And continued for an hour and 40 minutes in a series of poses that seemed effortless but would kill my thighs the next day.

She stressed that we should follow whatever our bodies wanted us to do. Rigid attention to the correctness of a pose can become too much of a focus, she said. There is no reason to do anything that does not feel good.

This is the kind of yoga to which anyone could relate.

Yoga is about opening, about expanding, she said, first with the body. That's what we were doing now.

When it came to the tree pose -- stand flamingo fashion on one leg and lift your arms over your head like branches -- she added something that was new to me: a partner. This pose is a difficult for me, especially balancing on my right foot, and I apologized in advance to my partner, who seemed as slim and lithe as a tree herself. But I found I could stand that way forever.

"Just that little support from one other person makes it so much easier," Maggie said to the group, which seemed to have more than a literal meaning.

At the end of the class, Maggie placed a large crystal bowl on the floor in front of her and asked us to close our eyes. "Open the space around you," she said, "to include this street, this neighborhood, this city, this state, this nation, the planet, the cosmos."

Music was playing now, and while our eyes were closed she caused to emanate from the crystal bowl a sound as cosmic as a sci-fi film.

And then, because Maggie is Southern, she invited us all to stay for black-eyed peas, to signify prosperity in the New Year. The peas, made with Canadian bacon tofu, were delicious.

- Sandra Thompson is a writer living in Tampa. She can be reached at tampa@sptimes.com.

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