My yoga classes have a weird effect on me. They act like a therapy session in which the therapist makes you talk about memories on the back of your mind to figure out what is it that you suffer from. Every time I do a pose in which I close my eyes, I see a flash back of a memory in front of my eyes. Today for just a second, I saw Vali-asr sqaure. I saw a very specific and narrow alley next to the square, in front of which a vendor is selling breakfast breads, with the trademark "Razavi" written on them. That takes me to another memory, to my grandmother, my mom's mother, who lived in Mashhad. We went to Mashhad pretty much every year to visit my mom's family. Our first stop was always my grandparents house. We would get there at night, having had dinner on the plane, we would talk to them for a while and then go to sleep. The real excitement for me was the next morning. My grandmother knew I loved those Razavi breads and at that time, they were only sold in Mashhad. Therefore, she would have each type of bread, sometimes two or three of the same type, at the breakfast table for me. I think my favorite breakfast ever was the one that we had at their basement, which had windows facing their backyard. The yard was still green and happy, not like the last time I went there to say goodbye to the house. All those years, my grandma never forgot to get those Razavi breads for me, well not until many years later when she got really sick and the yard became deserted.
During the last week's stretches, I remembered my English classes at ILI (Iran Language Institute). My English institute was on Shariati street, one of my favorite streets in Tehran. It was right in front of this huge bookstore which had the best collection of books and stationary and I always went there before my class and window shopped. The institute itself was a school, which served as a language institute in the evening. I took English, German and French classes there, during a course of 10 years, so I know every corner of that place really well. During my yoga class, I remembered the entry, which had doors with white bars. Upon entering you would see the registration office on your right and the teachers lounge on the left. I knew many teachers who were still there who were my instructor me when I was a teenager and many who had left already, mostly gone to west.
I got to know one of my best friends in those evening classes when I was in high school. We shared a common passion for books, at the time "Harry Potter" and we soon realized that we can talk, about every thing. Before we knew it, we started writing letters to each other. We wouldn't exchange those during the classes though, because what is the fun in that? We would mail them and patiently wait for them to arrive (sometimes after a month). Our letters were at times 30 pages long, hers sometimes longer than that. I struggled to keep up with Nazgol, cause her letters were full of details and events. It felt like I was living every moment that she had experienced with her. We stopped being each other's pen-pals after a letter that I sent her for Norouz (our new year) got lost. I had even made a bookmark for her and put it in the envelope alongside with the letter. I found the letter months later in my dad's car, he had simply forgotten to mail it.
Our Yogi has told us a couple of times that some of our moves can make us emotional. What he hasn't yet said is whether it's normal to cry during the practices? When the song being played is so soft and so identical to a song in one of your favorite Iranian movies of all time, is it normal to experience teary eyes? Should I be doing yoga after all?
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