Home Stuck

I left Victoria's Guest House Monday morning to stay at a friend's for a few days until my sublet became available. Since they don't stint on décor and renovation for their small house, their basement was furnished better than most hotels or B&Bs. I didn't mind the low ceiling because I'm short. The upshot was that I essentially had a nice bedroom with private bath and an office nook. Between their home business and my remote work, we only saw each other at mealtimes and a hour or two watching Netflix after dinner. This was as close to (50s) domesticity as I'll ever experienced with someone else taking care of food and cleaning.

But there were downsides to being on another person's schedule. I had no free time to check out local restaurants. The selections weren't as numerous as a street downtown, but there were some interesting choices. Wednesday night, I finally got them to try a Central Asian restaurant but we ended up with their go-to choice: Indian restaurant Nirvana in Mississauga. On the way back, they decided to visit another friend's restaurant to help out with chores. Luckily, I convinced both people that assembling tables while there were customers was not a good business decision. Thursday morning, I was 45 minutes late to the subway because they had slept in until 10:30 am. The alternative was to leave without saying goodbye and leaving their front door unlocked! A rather unfriendly behaviour. I breathed a sigh of relief when I arrived at my sublet and could look forward to some alone time. So my inclination for autonomy resulted from decades of bachelor living ... or was it the other way around?

I discovered a startling fact during my stay. While I was practicing in my friend's home gym which had full wall mirrors, I was disconcerted to see that I had lopsided shoulders. After almost 3 months of daily Yoga, I felt that there has been some excellent changes. There was a decline in some types of flexibility (e.g., splits, box pigeon) from my days of crazy yoga postures but overall my flexibility, mobility, and balance have improved. It was all about proper alignment now. So this shoulder imbalance felt embarrassing and humbling because I'd probably had it for years. How did I not feel this unevenness?

Over the next few practices I concentrated on balancing out my shoulders through every movement. I just hope that I can maintain this body awareness going forward without access to mirrors. Yet I also noticed that I did not have as much of a shoulder tilt when I was sitting down. So maybe there was another root cause: uneven hips, one shorter leg, minor scoliosis, or some other unknown condition? Well, there's more work to be done.