Home, Gym

 One of my most vivid memories of my mother has her sprawled out on the living room carpet, face up, her legs stretching over her head, the tips of her toes endeavoring to touch the nap. A lady on the television was talking her through it step by step.

“This is the plough,” said Lilias Folan, a lithe brunette whose half-hour program on PBS introduced my mother, and me by extension, to yoga. In those days, Lilias aired just after Sesame Street (or perhaps before Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood), memory no longer serves.  I must have been four years old, so it may have been strategically scheduled so that Mom’s yoga might overlap with sleep intervals I quietly resisted. 

As much as I loved Snuffleupagus, this gentle, bendy woman outfitted in tights and a side-striped leotard, was even more captivating as she demonstrated the artful poses that had my mother “rocking and rolling” herself into a pretzel before my eyes.

And it came flooding back with a piece in the New York Times this week about how televised exercise shows of the 1970s forever changed how America approached fitness. 

Lilias had a warm, easy way about her. Carefully guiding her “Class” through the poses she would introduce in Sanskrit and translate into English. She combed through the finer points of mediation and made people understand that breathing could be intentional instead of merely instinctive. 

And she kind of looked like Joan Baez, a literal folk hero to my mother. And she spoke as easily about finding happiness in life as she did about curing the sagging muscles of the upper arm. Both would take time and consistency.

I could definitely see the attraction. Which is why I joined her in our Living Room Gym every chance I got. 

Disco had ushered in a new kind of music to our shared delight, and its influence on pop music paired seamlessly with the next exercise ministry that followed: Aerobics. During those years, Mom was decidedly an acolyte of Bess Motta’s 20-Minute Workout. I remember coming home from high school to find her marching in four-four-time with the triad of lion-haired dancers working through the routine.

“Head rolls, forward … and back … two, three, four. Next one turns left … then right …”

With head rolls, and moves from side to side. Stretches and dynamic movements are all meant to rev up the heart rate and draw out perspiration.  Bess warned us about bouncing – specifically not to do it too much – since her hair with its mass of volume and curl gave off a false impression of her corporal form.

Each episode of the 20-Minute Workout was comfortably similar. A white background with a shiny floor, the camera circling the three of the dancers as if they were on a carousel, not the camera person. The only thing that seemed to change was the color of the outfits: tank-style bodysuits, belts, tights, and slouchy leg warmers. The three were always artfully coordinated but never matchy-matchy.

All I knew was standing in the living room next to Mom, our arms out and rocking from side to side was the closest either of us would ever come to recreate the movements we’d seen in Flashdance. 

It was a whole new experience for women like my mother. We didn’t have to make plans or reservations. We didn’t have to get into a car. We only had to switch on the channel at the designated time and just follow along.

We didn’t even have to be embarrassed. No one would know we’d fallen hopelessly out of sync.

Even after I’d moved out, Living Room workouts came full circle.

In the 2000s, Mom and I returned to televised yoga. She’d call me at 6 a.m. every morning to remind me Inhale with Steve Ross was about to Oxygen Channel. Ross, a California guru, had all the things we liked, gentle stretches, pop music, and a room full of young people wearing free-flowing, color-coordinated clothes. Again, the sequence was comfortably rote. The poses challenged without confounding us, and we could sing along. 

And more than just a daily practice, it was one of the most consistent ways we connected as mother and daughter. No matter how that relationship could fray, music and movement could always bring us back together.