yoga en plein air

I feel... so gosh darn good. This morning, I awoke at 8:30am. I left my apartment forty-five minutes later and entered the calm, quiet streets of Paris. I hopped on the metro to venture to the northeastern corner of the city. As I ascended the metro steps, I noticed a yoga mat sticking out of the backpack of a man in front of me. Excusez-moi monsieur, vous allez au le yoga dans le parc? Obviously he was going, too. Together, we wandered into Parc de la Villette in search of the géode. I swear, if I hadn't already been proud of myself for having gotten up early, I would've blown myself away with my French conversation skills ;).

Eventually, we found them: a group of about thirty French people dressed in various outfits (shirts and jeans, tees and sweatpants, actual yoga clothes) on a range of yoga mat interpretations (think straw, cotton, nylon). It was the least intimidating environment I've probably ever experienced in Paris; such a vast difference from the Lululemon-clad yogis of New York.

My new French friend and I were a bit late so we quickly set down our mats and entered the first posture. It felt amazing to stretch again. The sequence moved slowly and thoughtfully--each posture was thoroughly explained (fortunately for me, the French names are literal translations of the English ones) and held for longer than I'm used to. As such, it wasn't so much physically challenging as it completely tackled my otherwise racing mind. At the end of the hour and a half, I felt calm, quiet, centered.

I wished my friend a "bon journée"and exited the park a different way than we'd came. It was my first time there so I walked down to the canal, stopped at a market to pick up basil for this recipe, and made my way home. One of the nicest Sunday mornings I've had in a while, and thus, definitely not my last outdoor yoga class. I'm hoping to return to Parc de la Villette one night soon as well. A date night at "the cinéma" with a boyfriend I've been missing like mad (he's been traveling a lot for work) sounds perfect.