Fuck Coffee

Because I like to laugh I have to include this picture as I explore the Sanskrit names for yoga poses (asanas).  For a couple of winters we stayed in a friend's house, dog sitting her adorable but aged dog, on a bay in Alabama.  She and her partner wintered in the islands of the Pacific.  She had built this nature-preserve looking backyard where I practiced yoga, watched herons dive for fish and took endless photos of sunsets that turned the sky red.  It was a slice of heaven now sold and the joy of another soul.  Back to my reared pointing skyward.  In English this pose that I folded forward for on the dock overlooking the calm back bay waters of Orange Beach is called Wide Legged Standing Forward Fold easily renamed to Wide Legged Butt in the Air Pose. Totally easy to remember, right?  In Sanskrit it's Prosarita Padottanasana.  So the only part that makes sense it the last "asana" which we know to mean pose.  How about the rest?  I am eye-rolling once again. When a yoga teacher starts rattling these names off I just shake my head.  It is not what yoga is fundamentally about.  At all.  But I'm giving it a go because now retired I find myself sometimes starved for opportunities to strain my brain.  Prasarita means "wide."  Pada means "foot/leg."  Uttana means "stretched out."  Of course there is no way to know how to pronounce that unless you're from India or a Sanskrit scholar so I found this YouTube channel, Yoga with Anjani - The Right Way to Yoga.  Which is so informative.  The right way.  Whatever that is.  But I have to laugh and know this channel is for me because as I loaded up to watch how to pronounce and understanding the meaning of the Sanskrit words for Wide Legged Butt Pose, a commercial launched.  The visual was a brown cup with the words, "Fuck Coffee" on it, an advertisement for Mud Water.  Sounds yummy.  I sidetrack.  Here's how you pronounce this pose of me with my rear-end sky high in Sanskrit, pruh-saa-ri-tuh paa-do-ttaa-naa-suh-nuh.  Here's the video.  I carry on, not confident I will remember any of this the next time I breath out and slowly bend forward in a pose that still doesn't stretch my hamstrings.