fandomtownies | The beach, Tuesday morning

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The beach, Tuesday morning

Duke showed up early for his planned yoga practice with Rey, lugging along some plywood sheets to put down and give them a more stable surface. He spent a little while rearranging and pressing the sheets down to get as level a platform as possible, then laid a few rugs over them for a nicer surface.

The set up done, he stripped off his shoes and overshirt and laced his fingers together behind his head, looking out over the water.

This island was so freaking weird. But hot damn if it wasn't gorgeous, too.

He started through a sun salutation to warm up, and wondered if the sea monster was nearby.

[Anticipating one, but open for all. SP extremely likely until the afternoon. Up early because my employers in their infinite wisdom have decided to assign me mandatory training that starts an hour and a half before I'm usually even out of bed. . . .]

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Rey still wasn't entirely sure what to expect from this. She'd kept her clothing simple, nothing that she'd catch on anything, whatever was easiest to move in, and all of that was based on seeing Duke pretzel himself before.

And because of that, she hung a little off to the side for a moment to watch, not wanting to interrupt if this was something he had to finish out first.

(Sorry for the comparison, but she did this to Kanan, too.)

(Duke was never going to escape comparisons to Kanan. He just had to deal with that and move on.)

Duke spotted Rey about halfway through his flow and cut his last salutation short, straightening up and waving her over. "Morning."

"Hi," she said, making her way over. "I didn't want to stop you."

"Enjoying the show?" Duke asked with a smirk. "That's a pretty standard flow if you want to learn it. Nice and easy, made to get your blood flowing."

"A flow," she repeated, because she didn't exactly know how to respond to the first part. Look, she hadn't hated it. "I'm okay to learn it if you're okay to teach me."

"That's the movement from one pose to another," Duke explained. "There's a lot of terminology, let me know if I start spouting stuff off you don't understand." He looked around. "I guess we should just -- jump in, right?"

He had exactly two classes under his belt, and it wasn't as though anyone was expecting the pirate class to be very formalized, right?

"Okay, I guess let's start sitting. Crosslegged, if that's comfortable for you."

Rey pretty much thought formalized anything was overrated at this point.

"I spend a lot of time meditating these days, I'm very good at sitting," she said, glancing towards the pallets. "Here?"

“Yeah, grab some rug. We can either face each other or both face the water, newbie’s choice.”

"Maybe facing each other the first time, so I can see what I should be doing?" Rey said, standing on one of the rugs.

“Works for me.” Duke sat down on one side of the platform, crossing his legs and resting his hands on his knees. “We’re going to start with the breath.”

Rey took a seat, then decided she should probably ditch her boots and tossed them aside before carefully mirroring his position.

"Okay. Breath."

"Controlling the breath is the foundation of yoga," Duke said. "You said you meditate, so I'm guessing you're at least a little familiar with the idea?" He flashed her a smile and shrug. "We'll do a couple deep breaths together here. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Get comfortable in your seat, relax your shoulders, and lift up through your chest as you breath in. . . ." He rolled his shoulders back and straightened his spine, closing his eyes, and inhaled. "And out. Slow and easy."

Rey did as instructed, copying him as much as possible to make sure she was getting it right. She gave the breathing a few cautious tries, and found she actually had to focus a little differently this time. Which was interesting.

"This is a little different than what I'm used to," she admitted. Which wasn't a bad thing.

“Oh yeah?” Duke asked curiously, opening his eyes. “How do you usually do it?”

"I've done it specifically to connect with the Force," she said, and clarified, "It's like focusing outward instead of in."

Duke nodded. “I guess I can see that. Here, you’re trying to connect to your body instead. Specifically the way it moves and feels. For instance, when I breathe in deep through my nose—“ He did so, exaggerating the movement in his chest and stomach. “I feel my ribs expand. My diaphragm drops into my belly, and I can feel the temperature of the air through my nose. Then when I breathe out, my body contracts again. Even when I’m still, I’m always in motion.”

He took another deep, slow breath. “In my world at least, people are really bad at paying attention to their bodies. Yoga can help them recenter and really listen to what their bodies are telling them.”

"What kinda of things does it tell you?" Rey wondered.

It was easy enough to keep up with the breathing. Focusing there was actually easy, maybe a little comforting, in a way.

"How to take care of it," Duke said. "Our bodies know when we're hungry, thirsty, tired. What needs to be moved or what needs to be favored. There are so many signals that modern humans have trained ourselves to ignore, to the point where we don't even recognize what they mean anymore. Breathe in and listen. Tell me what you feel."

Rey took a few moments to breathe, and consider that.

"I actually feel okay," she said, and if she sounded a little surprised, well. She'd spent a year starving and thirsty and doing hard work every single day, and followed that up with actual torture, twice, followed by the toy thing. She hadn't really registered that getting distance would make her feel better. "A little stressed, but..."

"I'm glad to hear it," Duke said, smiling. "That means you can really focus in on the movement. On your next inhale, I want you to pay attention to where your breath goes in your body. Try to follow the air all the way through your respiratory system, through your nose, down your throat, into the very base of your lungs, then back out. And when you're ready, bring your hands together in front of your chest, and we'll start stretching."

It really was sort of the inverse of what Rey had already learned elsewhere, so it was easy enough for her to center, to figure out where her breath was going.

She put her hands together in front of her chest, and she thought she was doing that part right?

"Good," Duke said. This part wasn't so much about right or wrong. "Now that we've connected to the breath, we'll move with it. On the next inhale, lift your arms over your head, feeling the stretch from your wrists down through your sides to your hips." Duke demonstrated, arching his back a little to maximize the stretch. "And as you exhale, let your arms float back down to your sides."

Rey might have thought she looked silly, but none of this was weirder than anything else she'd had to do recently.

"I'm starting to see why you do this," she said, following along.

"It's great stress relief," Duke said. "Alright, on the next exhale, bring your arms forward instead, press them to the rug in front of you. We're going to move to hands and knees, pick up the pace a little."

He moved onto all fours ~~picking up the pace of the thread a little too!~~, shaking his hair out of his face as he checked her pose. "Knees should be directly under your hips, wrists under your shoulders. Back as straight and flat as you can make it. Take a breath once you're there, and we'll do something called 'cat-cow' poses."

"Cat-cow poses," she repeated, failing at trying not to look amused by that, but she still got her positioning right. "And what are those?"

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The beach, Tuesday morning

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