I finally found a way to do yoga that shortens up the path to enlightenment. You just lie on your back with your arms at your sides and palms facing upwards ready to receive inspiration and peace. Be still and breathe deeply. Imagine that your breath is the sound of the ocean, slowly drowning you.

No wait. Wake up. I mean, imagine that your breath is a straw and the air is pure oxygen. You're on a space mission and your tank is full. Floating freely in outer space forever, with no way to stop. Just gliding around in the stars for years on end until ...

Hold on. Back to the space ship. You're a kite flying high over the field at the local elementary school. A carefree child has a good grip on the string holding you to the ground. The high-tension electrical wires nearby don't pose a threat because we're all electrical beings anyway. Put your trust in the fifth grader who's not watching where you're going, and ZAP. You just caused a blackout in the tri-county area. But you may be the most enlightened piece of instant beef jerky ever seen in the annals of yoga.

See how easy it is to leave your worries behind? All it takes is a little imagination and proper breathing techniques. Possibly a sticky mat too. Just to keep you from floating away.

When I first started doing yoga I wasn't searching for enlightenment. I was looking for a way to cure my aching back. After helping a friend move 386 boxes of Beanie Babies from his old garage to his new one, I sat down on one of the boxes and never got up. My back just wouldn't straighten out anymore. And it hurt. But the physical pain was nothing compared to the humiliation I endured when my friend's wife attached a heartshaped tag to my ear and put me in a box labeled "not ready to retire."

I did a lot of good thinking in that box. In particular I thought about Yoda, how he moved space ships in Star Wars using nothing but the power of his mind (plus the force). I wanted to be able to do that on a small scale, starting with moving that box off my head. And then I was going to go for the whole magilla. Deft moves with light sabers, leading the rebel forces to victory over the evil empire, and getting out of bed in the morning without a winch.

So I got one of those yoga exercise videos. I watched it all the way through the first time as Gumby stretched and contorted in ways that only a cartoon can. I tried doing that for a while, but soon realized that you can't be a small stuffed animal and a cartoon character all in one lifetime. I had to be me. So I waited for the cooldown exercises at the end of the video, and finally hit pay dirt.

Gumby said to lie down on your back and turn your palms open to the heavens. Then he instructed us to empty our pockets of all material possessions and give him our credit card numbers. In return, we would receive a sticky mat and a special poem. Something to keep us grounded on our journey to enlightenment.

That was the day I learned how to let it go, and I owe it all to yoga. I may be a little over-extended now, but I can bend and stretch like you wouldn't believe. I went back to the scene of the crime to show my friend how well I recuperated from the Beanie Baby move, and read everyone my new poem. My friend's wife was so impressed that she attached a new heartshaped tag to my ear and said they just might retire me yet.