A Lesson in Yoga

This is a sequel to my story "A Brief Affair"

*

My visit to her apartment was reflected in Liu and my relationship at the office. Our demeanor when we met was less jovial, and our previous banter was replaced by more serious conversation. A topic which came up with increasing frequency was Liu's devotion to yoga. I have never been a fan of new-age spiritualism and, because of its association in my mind with yoga, I have never given yoga much credence. Thus, when Liu began extolling the beneficial effects, both mental and physical, that she derived from her yoga program, I was skeptical.

However, after a while, my skepticism gave way to curiosity. What particularly intrigued me was Liu's description of the pleasure she got from surrendering herself to the demands which various yoga poses make on her body. According to her, yoga exercise aims at stretching and, quite literally opening, portions of the anatomy to which one otherwise is inclined to pay little attention. Particular focus is on the joints and the tendons and ligaments which maintain those joints in their customary closed state. During yoga, these tendons and ligaments are stretched until the joint opens in a way that, for most people, it has not done since early childhood. The stretching process entails some mild discomfort, but Liu assured me that the rewards far outweigh the mild pain which one has to endure in order to achieve them.

Spurred by what she told me and the idea of watching her lithe body perform, I asked if Liu would give me a demonstration at her apartment. Initially she hesitated on the grounds that she preferred not to mix two important aspects of her life: one being sex and the other yoga. Disappointed, I nonetheless respected her reasoning and did not press the issue. Thus I was surprised, when the following week, she announced that she would like to give me a demonstration on the condition that she would remain in complete control throughout. Having no objections to the terms she specified, I readily accepted her invitation.

Thinking that she intended this visit to be distinctly different from my last one, I had not anticipated that Liu would greet me at her door wearing a leotard and, it appeared, little else. As distinguished from their state during my first visit, both she and her apartment were carefully prepared for my arrival. Her hair was carefully plaited into a pigtail drawn to one side so that it covered her right ear and rested on her shoulder, and her scrubbed body radiated a healthy glow. As for the apartment, the living room had been cleared of all its furniture, and, besides the carpet, the only thing on the floor was a thin foam rubber mat. In addition, even after I removed my coat, the room seemed rather hot to me, an observation which was confirmed by the beads of perspiration on Liu's brow.

Once we entered her living room, Liu took charge. Without further ado, she began by having me sit cross legged on the floor a few feet from one end of the mat. Noticing my awkwardness in assuming and obvious difficulty in maintaining this position, she suggested that I draw up my knees and wrap my arms around them, thereby relieving both my legs and back. Then, satisfied that I was reasonably comfortable, she walked to the center of the mat, turned to face me, dropped her hands to her hips, and slowly began lowering her upper torso. In concert with the descent of her body, she raised her head so that her eyes continued to look directly into my own. She stopped when her torso was horizontal, remaining completely still except for the expansion and contraction of her ribs when she took carefully measured breaths, always through her nose and never through her mouth. I was struck by the look of utter tranquility and contented self-absorption on her face, but I had only a brief time to study her features.

Dropping her head, she continued her descent until her chest was espaliered to her legs, her face was resting against her shins, and her hands were clasped to her heels. Deprived of her face, my attention turned to the aesthetically pleasing contours of her bent body. As I have said, Liu's body lacks the sumptuous curves of her Caucasian sisters. Nonetheless, her pose highlighted those curves that she has. Above, her hips and upper thighs flared on either side of her narrow waist, and below her ribcage and shoulders hid her knees and most of her lower legs. Wanting to have a view from the other side, I rose and circled her in much the same way as an art connoisseur might circle a statue, and like a piece of fine sculpture, the view she presented from in rear was just as appealing as that from the front. Especially appealing was the way her buttock and the backs of her upper thighs were displayed. Like most Asian women, Liu's lacks the padding that Caucasian women have on their buttock. As a result, the contours of her compact rear are more subtle but no less pleasing. Similarly, there is only a thin layer of flesh to mask the sinews in her thighs, and so the tension in them and her hamstrings were clearly visible. In marked contrast to that tension was the serene expression on her face, which peered through and was framed by her calves. Succumbing to temptation, I leaned forward to run my hand along her tightly stretched muscles, doing my best to ignore any lascivious implications of what I was doing, even when my hand passed over the junction at the top of her thighs and grazed over the pouting purse of her vulva.

As soon as I had completed my inspection of her body and returned to my seat in front of her on the floor, Liu released her heels and spread her arms while raising and simultaneously twisting her torso, ending in a pose in which her upper body was turned at a right angle to her hips with one arm pointing directly down toward her toes and the other arm reaching in a graceful line toward the ceiling. In spite of the skewed position of her upper body, Liu's head was at the same angle it would have been had she been standing normally, staring at me with that same enigmatic composure which it had had since she began her exercises. I noticed that it was not only her face but also the half of her body below her waist which were in the same posture that they normally are. Indeed, her hips and shoulders had remained parallel to the floor, the twist in her body taking place entirely at her waist. After she had taken a couple of breaths, she slid one leg forward until its knee touched the elbow of her lower arm, at which point she wrapped her forearm around her leg and leaned back,drawing her leg up as she rose.

With her torso once again upright and one leg hugged to her chest, she resembled an exotic water foul who can stand for hours balanced on one leg. The only sign that the maintenance of this pose was less natural for Liu than it is for one of those birds was the increasing evidence of sweat, which was no longer confined to the perspiration on her brow and had begun to weld her leotard to her skin. If anything, by now her leotard only drew attention to every detail of the body to which it had become plastered. Apparently unaware of or oblivious to the exposure of her body, Liu continued her exercise by lowering the leg which she had raised and gracefully reproducing the same pose with her other leg.

When she finally lowered the second leg, she placed her hands on her hips and acknowledged my presence for the first time since my arrival.

"What you have been watching is a few of the basic yoga poses. As you will have observed, yoga is distinguished from other forms of athletic activity by the fact that it never involves herculean feats of strength or heroics but only intense concentration and discipline. The idea is to get the body to perform in ways which would be completely natural if the muscles which perform them had not atrophied from disuse. Further, yoga teaches you to use, rather than numbing it with calisthenics, your mind to regain the use of those muscles. Of course, the adage `no gain without pain' applies to yoga as well, but here too there is a difference. Rather than tough it out, in yoga one is supposed to surrender to and then rise above discomfort. That's the reason why an essential component of the yoga discipline is to keep one's face impassive no matter what demands one is making on ones body. You surely noticed the expression on my face never varied during my exercise. Thus, you had no way of knowing which of my poses entailed discomfort, much less how much discomfort. The best way for you to gain an understanding of what I am talking about is for you to join me on the mat and find out for yourself how these subtle exercises can teach you about your body and mind."

With some reservations, I accepted her invitation and rose to my feet. Before I had taken a step toward her, Liu pointed out that my clothes would inhibit movement and instructed me to remove everything except my underpants. Once I had complied, she stepped forward and, taking me by the hand, led me to the mat and had me sit on it. Seeing that I was uncertain how to position myself once I was seated, Liu knelt in front of me and, after placing a hand on each of my ankles, gently spread my legs as wide as they would go. She then rocked back to seat herself. Looking me straight in the eye, she next placed a foot on each of my ankles while reaching her hands forward and indicating that I should place my hands in hers. After clasping my hands, Liu outlined the lesson that she intended to teach me.

"I gathered that what interests you most about yoga is its concept of resignation: the willingness to surrender to the demands which you are putting on your body. Thus, I will attempt to teach you that concept by having you experience such resignation yourself. To this end, I am going to lean back while bracing my feet against your legs. As I lean further back, your legs will be forced to spread, and you will experience a sharp sensation in your groin. I will proceed with care, but I will not spare you. Indeed, my goal is to make you accept what is being done to you and, if possible, have you do so without allowing your discomfort to register on your features. If I succeed, by the time I have finished you will have passed through a period of significant discomfort and emerged from that period with sense of pride about what your body has been able to learn and what you have learned about your body's capabilities."

No sooner had Liu told me her intent than she began leaning back. Although she had moved less than half a foot, I immediately felt a twinge in the tendons of my groin. My instinctive response was to gasp for air through my mouth, an instinct of which Liu clearly disapproved. Telling me to close my mouth and take measured breaths through my nose, she patiently waited until my tendons had stretched enough to accommodate the stress to which they were being subjected. When she saw that she could continue without doing me harm, she leaned back another few inches, this time drawing my upper body forward over my splayed legs. Again she waited until she saw that my body was capable of proceeding, but, as soon as my breathing returned to normal, she leaned back until I was drawn into a position in which my chin was inches from her mons and my legs were further apart than I had thought it possible for them to be. With a hint of a smile on her face, she lectured me while she watched me struggle to tolerate the strain she was purposefully imposing on my groin.

"Continue to breath through your mouth and try to compose your face. Having endured the same experience myself, I know what messages your tendons are sending to you, but I want your mind to assert its dominance by ignoring those messages. It may take several minutes, but, in the end, your mind will prevail and your groin will learn to accept its fate. Since I rather enjoy watching your plight, I am in no rush and am ready to wait until your mind is victorious."

Fortunately, my groin cooperated faster than I had feared, and the acute pain which I had initially experienced began to recede after less than a minute. It was replaced by a not altogether unpleasant itching sensation. At the same time, I became aware that I, like Liu, was sweating profusely and that the intimate details of my own body had become just as visible as hers. Moreover, much to my embarrassment and Liu's amusement, by the time that she released her hold on my hands, I had a considerable erection which caused my penis to emerge in an obscene fashion through my fly.

"I am pleased to see that your torment has not diminished your libido, which is obviously in tact. In spite of my concern about allowing sex to enter the part of my life devoted to yoga, I suggest that we complete your initiation into the mysteries of yoga with a form of physical activity more familiar to you. With this in mind, I will await you in my bedroom."

No suggestion could have been more to my liking, and shortly after she disappeared I extricated myself from the splayed position in which she had left me and, somewhat painfully, hobbled off to join her.