What’s an imbalanced person like me doing yoga?

Good question. I had visions of twisted people chanting soothing sounds and somehow looking relaxed. And I guess that’s true. Only my sounds are moaning noises like oi vey and ay caray — the only times I’m bilingual — and I never look balanced.

After a few face burns from kakasana. More appropriately called the forehead-to-the-floor-very-rapidly pose. It’s also called crow pose, which is where the saying ‘eat crow’ same from, I think.

Not only was my body put to the test, but so was my tongue. I can barely pronounce “exacerbated,” but I never use it. I’m afraid I might make it sound dirty. Paripurna Navasana, Utthita Parsvakonasana, Ananda Balasana. I wondered if some of these names appear in mail order catalogs for Russian brides.

I do well with flexibility poses. Even showing off to my younger yogi and yogini partners. I can sit with one foot drawn up against my thigh, grab the other foot and pull it over my head. Well, almost. One thing I found — you don’t want to get too cocky with yoga. I wasn’t right for a week.

But those balancing poses. While everyone else stands in tree pose — you get it — on one foot, the other pulled tightly against the straight thigh, looking like a sturdy redwood, facing majestically forward, arms extending upward towards the heavens, I wobble to and fro on one foot, arms flailing around like branches of a tree in 90 mile an hour gust of wind. I call it the rooster pose. I rotate back on forth on the ball and heel of my foot in an unsteady circle, looking like an old weather vane on top of a barn.

I got savasena down pretty good though. It’s the rest period at the end. I was a natural. I learned it in kindergarten. (Wasn’t everything we had to know learned in that little room?) Mrs. Kiskaden, my teacher, had noted, “Rests very well,” next to my grade in naptime on my report card. Last week I exited my yoga session with a gold star on my forehead.