your yoga is showing.

Let’s face it. Once Columbus Day hits, those of us crazy enough to brave winter on this island basically do so on our couches. Sometimes, when we’re feeling particularly sociable, we might go to other people’s couches. But other than the occasional snowshoe excursion to the post office or trip to the five and dime, it’s pretty much sofa city from October on.

So, when I moved here about a year and a half ago, straight from the bustling streets of Manhattan – where I NEVER sat on my couch watching Law & Order marathons for better parts of Sunday afternoons, what with all of the museum-visiting and lecture-attending and general woman-about-towning I had going on – all of this down time took some getting used to.

I’d say two weeks.

Once I’d settled into my new routine of working, playing, reading and “cooking,” I realized it might be a good idea to look into a hobby that actually required leaving the house.

And this, my friends, is what brought me to my first yoga class. Not a burning quest for spiritual enlightenment. Not the desire to maintain a healthier, more holistic lifestyle. Not even the promise of leaner legs and firmer abs. (Though, as long as we’re promising things, I probably would’ve taken some nicely toned biceps and triceps, too.)

No, I’d heard of the many benefits of practicing yoga and they all sounded swell. But the truth is:

I was bored.

Oh, also? I had one friend. You might have heard about her. She’s a little, blonde dynamo and she LOOOOOVES the yoga.

So in the early days of our friendship, when Erin suggested we try a yoga class and I was all, totally! I love yoga! Watch me touch my toes! I was basically just looking for a way to pass the few hours between work and Wheel of Fortune.

Well, here’s where things get complicated. Because now? If pressed, I will tell you everything you never wanted to know about “my practice.” Erin and I love comparing our favorite “asanas,” often over a steaming cup of kombucha tea, and we’ll even, on occasion (occasions we are not especially proud of) throw out a “pranayama” reference or two.

This was not an easy transition for either of us to make. And although Erin was coming from a much more yoga-friendly place than I, it took us both a good five or six months to truly embrace this new, healthy and totally un-funny part of ourselves.

Because for some reason, yoga and the funny have a hard time coexisting. How is it possible that a yoga teacher will ask you to breathe into your pelvic muscles while remembering the way your Kindergarten teacher smelled, all with a stone-straight face and a sense of urgency that borders on the terrifying?

This is the pressing question that keeps us up at night. (That, and just how ACTIVE are the active cultures in yogurt? I mean, really.)

Welcome to Upward Facing Mondays. For the yogis and yoginis among you, we’ll be posting some of our favorite poses and anecdotes, complete with (possibly costumed) photo shoots and easy-to-follow instructions. And for the haters, we promise never to take ourselves too seriously, and never, not even once, will we ask you to lift your hearts and smile.