Zoom Yoga

Short comic about teaching movement to my longtime yoga group, who continue practicing together online throughout the COVID19 pandemic and now. First page: nine rectangular panels, three across and three down, create a zoom screen grid of students’ faces. I’m in the upper, middle panel, wearing a black t-shirt and saying, “Good morning! Let’s say hello and get started.” Some students wear glasses. Their backgrounds include lamps, bookshelves and other furniture at home. In the bottom middle panel, a cat sits on a student’s lap and gazes into the camera. Text says: Teaching movement online. Second page: Closeup with four panels, showing only parts of the students. Zooming in on one person’s lower half, another’s foot in a striped sock, a third person’s hair and shoulders, and the cat’s rear end. Text says: Looks fragmented, but. (Yes this is a visual joke. And also refers to how strange it is to teach a somatic practice on zoom.) Third page: Outlined lightly, as if their bodies are losing solidity, students climb out of the four panels (their zoom screens). Limbs reach outside the lines, and the cat has escaped the zoom screen completely. Text says: It’s how we stay together. Fourth page, final: Our rectangular zoom screens have become rectangular yoga mats, and we are in a room together. Seven students sit in various postures, in a conversational circle. I sit on my heels facing them, with my back to the reader. Everyone relaxes, happy to be together. The cat is there too, in the lower corner of the page, signaling the end of the comic.

Black line drawing, 2023.