Yoga Fair

One of the tasks in my List of 13 was to attend a cultural activity, and for it I choose the Yoga Fair. My friend Lau and I went after our regular Sunday yoga class along with out yoga instructor and her sister. The Fair has been held for three days at a cultural center known as FANAL, which used to be the national alcohol factory, but now is leased out (I believe for pretty much free) for any group with a cultural or artistic interest. In this fair you could enjoy music, and different dance and exercise presentations, as well as different posts with all sorts of information and products.

We had a smaller fair at our gym last year, where I bought the last day a green yoga mat, which I left it Hungary. My blue yoga mat - my first one - has sand on it since I took it once to the beach, and it kinda stuck on it, so I was thinking about getting myself a new mat, and today being the last day at the fair, I thought I'd get a good price on them. Nope. I can get a yoga mat on Amazon.com at $19, spend $63 on a whole set of mat, bag and water bottle. At the Fair the cheapest mats were on $50, but there were many that started on $100 and ran up to $135. On the last day.

So, no new yoga mat for me, and since we have other things to concentrate on, the new mat will be relegated for the future.

With the mat out of the picture, I concentrated on simply enjoying what the Fair had to offer. We had food - spicy and delicious - and wandered around the stands where we got information about an International Meditation Day for the World, a yoga and meditation retirement called Pachamama, other yoga centers, health and yoga magazines and a bunch of natural, artisanal products. Lau and I got matching stickers for our cars (it's fun, but we both wanted the same sticker, so we ended up with the same meditating stick figure). I also got a small towel with the same figure embroided on it, but most of it was about brochures and getting to know about the wider world who's interested in yoga not only as a hobby or a way to do something to balance your daily life, but as a way of life and a way of thinking where they actually live their entire lives.

Yoga is more, can be more. It can be the weekend program, the hour or hour and a half you take to unload the pressure out of you and recharge you for the new week, but it does have the potential to be more too. Then again, just as yoga, many things we put in our lives can become a lifestyle, the frame in which we find ourselves and where we live our lives. It's not like you have to choose one thing and live inside of it, but we do tend to pick one thing and make it central. A job, a hobby, family... whatever you pick, make sure it really makes you happy and it gives you enough room to grow, that it helps you be better and bring you closer to who you are.

I like yoga, and I like what it has to offer, but I don't think I'll take it as a way of life, but the pieces I take from it I cherish, and I set them in the frame of my life. Namaste.