Yogis. And stupid headstands

In high school, coaches, teachers and friends all told me that I desperately needed yoga in my life. Something that would force me to calm down for an hour. I was (and still am) an extreme stress case. Full speed is the ONLY speed, yaknow?!??

So when “Health and Wellness Week” in college offered a free yoga class, I took it. Let me tell you: it was a joke. As a cheerleader for ten years, I am more flexible than most… so while the girls (and guy) next to me grunted and moaned through the stretches, I was bored. On top of that, the instructor had us line our mats in a circle (“like the never ending beautiful circle of life”, she emphasized). During the more challenging stretches, someone’s face was always awkwardly close to my body. No thank you. 

Combine that with the instructor’s way-too-hippie instructions, such as “Lower your body to mother earth and really inhale the exquisite smells of nature. Allow yourself to be one with the dirt”. Woman, we are in a carpeted conference room with florescent lights. I cynically thought. The closest thing to nature we have is the wood conference table.   It was NOT an event that I wanted to “re-experience” **(credit to Michelle Claudio, for the best saying ever). 

BUT I am a believer in second chances and redemption… so I gave yoga another shot. I dutifully give pay $65 bucks/month to the best climbing gym ever, and I wanted to take advantage of my very expensive membership. I’m back into the “I’m-going-to work-out-EVERY DAY… except maybe the days I don’t feel like it” swing of things, and yoga was a good excuse for NOT running. 

Mistake #1: If yoga was anything like my first class, I wasn’t going to need a water bottle.” Psh, this is going to be CAKEEEE”, one of my most arrogant thoughts EVER. Boy, was I wrong. Please note: water is needed for yoga. Or for any other class offered at a GYM. Duh.  

Mistake #2: Not bringing a partner. The instructor paired us up for massages. The husband and wife, the two best friends…and me. This left me with the instructor. He massaged me (and by massage, I mean shoved his skull into my lower back and tried a new form of physical torture: deep tissue massage), and then I had to return the favor and massage his 65-year old body. Uhhhh yeah….

Mistake #3: Not bringing ANYONE. Everyone left the class and the instructor sat down with me to have a deep talk for half an hour regarding my career and not being afraid and happiness and stars aligning and my Leo sun by my Venus moon and my detail-oriented nature and putting myself first and how God doesn’t exist, but we should all subscribe to astrology. And by “talk” I mean… lecture. I said nothing and tried to politely smile as my body cried for water. 

I don’t want to be misleading… the class didn’t start bad. It was fine; the instructor looked like Doc Brown’s clone, and I enjoyed the deep breathing and forced relaxation. The room was warm (thank you Sacramento for the Africa heat and Pipeworks for not believing in air conditioning), but not unbearable. The exercises were more like deep stretches that I haven’t enjoyed since high school.  

And then the head stand… We were in our head stands, breathing deeply, and focusing on our thyroid gland or something, but all I could think about was the blood rushing to my head. It didn’t help that it got 100 degrees HOTTER in the room and I was sweating from all pores.  We were given the instructions to very very slowly, slowly SLOWLY lower our hips back onto the ground, concentrating on one vertebrae at a time. I was focusing, but before I knew it… WHAM!!!!! Dust fell from the ceiling and the walls shook as my hips defiantly came back down to mother earth. Since there were only five of us in class, it was pretty easy to figure out who had caused the earth shake. Talk about embarrassing. 

The last part of class had us in dead corpse pose. Which would totally be a dead corpse, except I had to focus extra hard to make my heels touch. And if I were a dead corpse, my position of choice would be on my stomach, with arms and legs flailed to the side. With drool coming out. Yeah. Take that, yoga! 

ANYWAYS, he had us focus on relaxing by giving us imaginative descriptions of our bodies… “Picture your feet just melttinngggg awayyyyy….” While he did this, all I could see was a cartoon version of myself slowly being erased, from the bottom up. Eventually our whole body became erased and I envisioned myself as just a floating head. What a creepy way to end class, Doc.

So that's my yoga story. As a treat for making it through my rant, here is a prank video (because I love being on the other side of a good prank). If you haven't seen the New York Grand Central Freeze, here it is :) Enjoy... oh, and Happy Monday!!!