Yesterday indeed I went to the evening yoga practice after having taken two classes in the morning. I was handsomely rewarded with beautiful classmates and I gave them everything I had.

Minor aside: I chatted with a friendly Argentinian guy who has a great handstand who seems eager to make friends (probably a newcomer), he has an energy I don’t like, but I don’t know if it’s my Argentinian prejudice. I try to put these feelings aside when I meet people from Argentina, but the PTSD due to my ex is sufficient for me to cringe upon hearing the accent and think he’s a narcissistic prick. To be fair (to myself) narcissistic pricks are overrepresented in the Argentinian population but not sufficiently for it to be a valid prejudice.

Last night I was restless and hungry, I got up twice to snack on food, despite having had dinner before going to bed. I woke up for an early yoga practice but I had to get a taxi because my nearest station had none available (Madrid is super lazy redistributing bicycles, every other city I’ve known has trucks constantly shuffling bikes from low demand into high demand zones).

At class I sit down and I observe myself. It’s strange because, as of late, I can sense inside with much more fidelity. Imagine some one asks you to feel your genitals as you are sitting. What do they mean? It’s placing your attention into a body part that has a distinct feeling from other parts. When you feel your hand it feels different than when you feel your genitalia. I tend to encourage warmth, but I avoid fantasy and visual imagery. It is mere female presence that I breathe in and out, and sometimes I get very subtle physical responses (there’s increased bloodflow, but not an erection as such), and I dedicate my practice to every woman in the room (including the ones I don’t feel attracted to), and sometimes I add “yeah and a blessing for us guys too”.

Yesterday’s class is given by a teacher to asks us to line up our mats against the wall in case we need a handstand assist. This means that we face each other towards the center of the room. Yesterday, the classmate who was squarely in front of me was a beautiful distraction. It wasn’t a struggle to look or not to look out of perceived perviness, inwardly there was a clearly a fight for attention between the practice and the woman. I’m pretty certain this is not visible to the outer world, you may see me move my head from side to side to catch a glance of someone, for example, but I never stare.

Today, for whatever reason, I’m less at odds with these sensations than yesterday. I guess I’m fighting my sexual energy less and giving it some course rather than allowing it to sit stagnant. Sexual frustration (that is: desire combined with self-judgement) is the mother of all deviations. Take away self-judgement and you have desire circulating freely. It still increases your nervousness but the sensation starts to feel pleasant.

I’ve also observed how quick the body and the mind respond to stimuli adjustments. I already knew this from a trip to Morocco: I went to Tangier and thought “oh women cover more here than in Spain” and as I travelled south I found women more and more covered. They never ceased being attractive to me, I would look at them in the eyes and try to guess the face behind the eyes, it had a degree of mystery we have lost in our virtue signaling society where it’s wasteful to conceal an attractive body.

When I started making my way back north and I reached Tangier again, the women there appeared to be the sexiest women on the planet, a pair of tight jeans and I was “aboooooooga”. Back in Spain women seemed to be wearing so few garments they might as well go naked.

The same thing happens when you stop gawking at women on instagram (or worse). Little sexy everyday moments become etched in memory and capture your full attention.