fandomtownies | The beach, Tuesday morning

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The beach, Tuesday morning

Rey was back and she and Duke had settled things, which meant it was business as usual for beach yoga. Unless you thought too hard about the fact that it was the end of February and so far there'd only been one Tuesday cold enough for Duke to decide to move it indoors. That either meant that Duke was a cruel and merciless teacher, or that the environment was taking its revenge and slowly killing the human race.

Duke was trying not to think about either option. As far as he was concerned, this was because Maryland was south, and thus didn't get real winters.

Either way, he was doing some easy stretches while waiting for his usual student today, keeping an eye on the porgs and seeing which movements he could get them to mimic. They were down for any and all arm and leg raising. Bending over and twisting the torso were right out, though.

[open, though will be slow in the afternoon EST due to work training]

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"Good," Duke said. He came over to adjust her again, though there was less that needed fixing this time. "Check in with your legs. Keep those thighs activated -- tight, I mean -- so you keep a stable base. Make sure your knee stays solidly in line with your ankle. You'll probably start feeling the burn through those quads."

"Why is so much of this like a foreign language?" Octavia wondered with a faint snort. She couldn't spare a more prononced one from all her focus on her body being elsewhere. "Bilaik ai beda chich yu op gon Trig, jaka."

"Same language, new vocabulary," Duke said. "Bilaik yu chich ai op new words gon Trig, gona." You know, like she did all the time. "You want a whole new language, I could start talking about Virabhadrasana and Baddha Konasana."

Pfft, like trying to insert logic into her half-hearted complaining ever did anything.

"Brana telon gon Trig," Octavia replied, because she couldn't let the opportunity pass. She was also currently kind of assuming she'd figured out where 'quads' were, based on where she was feeling a burn, yes. "Which language is that?"

That one wasn't specific to yoga or exercise generally, so Duke had assumed she might already know it. Anatomy seemed like the sort of thing they might still learn after the apocalypse, though maybe not if they weren't actively studying medicine.

"Sanskrit. The language yoga was invented in. Buddhism was too, actually. Virabhadrasana is the traditional term for warrior pose. Baddha Konasana is butterfly pose." He stepped back a little, looking over her form again. "You want to try Warrior III? It's way harder than I and II."

It had been a fair assumption! Octavia's schooling had just been... very, very limited, which was something she was still trying to make up for in various ways now.

(Although the way she mouthed 'Baddha Konasana' to herself after he'd said it like she was memorizing the words actually had nothing to do with that.)

And then, her gaze flicked over to him somewhere around 'way harder'. "Yes." Because this was definitely the same girl who'd kept letting guys twice her size beat her up until Indra told them to stop.

"Thought you might," Duke said with a grin. "Alright. So Warriors I and II are pretty stable, right? You've got one foot pointed forward, the other pointed to the side, giving you a little bit of a triangular base. Warrior III requires balance."

Instead of talking through the shift this time, he just demonstrated it, shifting his weight forward onto his front foot and bringing the back leg up, while he stretched his arms forward. His yoga clothes -- an undershirt and sweatpants, no shoes, even when it was cold out -- were thin and clingy enough to show which muscles were tightening where, and how much core strength went into keeping his back flat and parallel to the ground.

And, yeah. He was definitely showing off here. Just a little.

Just a little?

Sure.

Only a part of Octavia was really taking note of that, though. (It was the same part that appreciated how thin the fabric was, and that had very fond memories of him wearing even less, and that agreed with Lucifer about his bendiness.) The rest of her was looking him over with another light frown, taking note of how his weight was distributed and just -- anything she could about figuring out how he was holding the pose.

She already knew she wasn't going to pull it off. Probably wasn't going to stop her trying, though.

Trying was the first step to accomplishing! Or some other motivational buzz speak like that.

Duke dropped back out of the pose, stepping back onto his now lowered foot and pushing the little whisps that refused to stay in his ponytail back out of his face. "It's more important with that one to get your back flat than to get your leg way up there," he said. "You want to find a point where you can balance. You can work your way up to the full tabletop effect."

Octavia didn't say anything. This particular look of determination tended to go that way: her focus turned inward.

Too bad it didn't turn into an immediate success. She did an okay job with her back, but pushed a little too far in her search for balance and had to drop her elevated foot back down to keep from toppling over.

Her little mutter was probably something rude, yes.

"Mutter all you like," Duke said. "We can work on the zen later. Here." He moved in front of her and held up his arm a few inches from where she was stretching her hands. "You can grab onto me if you start to lose your balance again, so you don't have to fall all the way out of the pose.

"Try pressing back through your raised leg like you're pushing against a wall, even while you're stretching forward. And try not to lock your knee -- that means keep just a little bit of a bend. Your knees and ankles are natural shock absorbers. When you lock them, you're putting stress on your whole body."

Octavia held up a hand, for a brief time out.

And then she bent down to untie the laces on her boots, and to kick them off. They weren't the biggest or clunkiest she owned, but they were still fairly heavy - or at least enough so that she suddenly found them annoying. She also peeled off her socks, because if she was going this far already then she might just as well get fully connected to what was under her feet.

And once she was standing on cold sand, it was time to try again. It went better, this time, in part because she didn't try to overdo raising her leg too high and just focused on trying to find her balance with everything else she had going on.

There was a slight wobble where it looked like she was about to have to grab his arm, but she managed to correct it on her own. ... Kind of. For a second, and then she did grab his arm.

That arm was there for a reason, and rock-steady. Duke knew all too well how hard it could be to find and maintain your balance in a new pose.

He couldn't help a little grin though at her going barefoot. "That's good," he said. "Let yourself connect fully to the earth. Like growing roots."

He made a mental note to cover tree pose, too. A much easier balancing pose, as well as another pose name he figured she'd appreciate.

Octavia had let out another annoyed grunt at her wobble, her brows pulling into a deep frown. But then she looked up, and saw his little grin --

And it felt like she came back out of her annoyance, back into the moment. Like something calmer washed over her.

Her next attempt at balancing on her own went better.

“Good,” Duke said, when he saw her expression ease and her pose start to stabilize. “There’s some zen. The calm helps the pose, and as you start to settle in, the pose helps the calm.”

Octavia threw him a dry look at bringing up zen, but it lacked all the heat it might've had when she'd still been wrapped up in her annoyance.

In fact, it seemed even subtly fond, if you knew how to look.

She breathed slowly, just trying to hold the pose for a moment longer. It was far from perfect, her torso wasn't fully parallel to the ground nor was her back leg very high, but at least she didn't wobble, so. She deemed it acceptable for a first try.

Very acceptable. Especially considering this was her first yoga lesson.

"Nice," Duke said. He absolutely knew how to look, and gave her a fond look in return. "You want to try some more balance poses, or switch to something else?"

"Something else," Octavia replied once both her feet were touching sand again. "A different kind of challenge?"

She had a renewed desire to work more on her balance now, sure, but maybe not right this moment.

"Alright," Duke said. "Let's do some bending and twisting, then. A big part of yoga is the breathing. So we'll start in mountain pose -- or as most people call it, standing up straight."

He stepped back about a foot to give them both room to move, and stood with his feet together, his back straight, his hands in prayer position at his chest.

"Take a deep breath in, and at the same time, raise your hands up over your head. Then as you exhale slowly, let them drift back down to your sides."

The focus on breathing was still kind of new and odd to Octavia, but she couldn't deny there was something soothing about it when she tried syncing her movement to it the way he told her to.

Also, it was nice just to not be in danger of toppling over, for the moment.

That was always advantageous, yes. "Good," Duke said. "Inhale, arms up, and the next exhale, drop your body forward to touch your toes."

Like before, Octavia followed his instruction quietly - and definitely didn't hum a pleased sound at the stretch in her back when she was reaching for her toes.

Except she did, of course.

Duke laughed softly. "It's a good one," he said. "Let's just hang out here for a couple breaths. Make sure you've got some bend in your knees, and just let your upper body hang from your hips. You can sway back and forth a little, let your spine go nice and loose."

"Don't laugh at me," Octavia complained, though it didn't sound serious at all.

The ends of her hair were just barely brushing against the sand. Should've used to a hair tie, not that she particularly cared.

"Not making fun, just enjoying your appreciation," Duke said. "You should hear the noises I make when I do this after a long day. You'd probably recognize a few of them."

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