YO, YO, YO

For years, people have told me to try yoga. Good for stress relief, good for concentration, yadda yadda yadda. So for years, I have gone to the occasional yoga class, hoping every time that I will be as amazed by this bizarre series of stretches as everyone else seems to be. And every time, I am sorely disappointed (key word: sore).

But I have always felt as though I would jive well with the yoga type: I mean, I take vitamins just like they do. So this morning, I gave yoga another go-ya.

My gym offers several yoga classes. I decided to steer clear of “yoga buns” out of pure fear for what that meant and opted for “Piyo,” with its apt description of combined Pilates and yoga exercises. It’s always a pleasure to be singled out at the beginning of class when the instructor asks “Who’s new here?” Luckily, I was not the only newbie.

I have to give the woman who was in front of me credit for sticking out the entire class. She was probably in her mid-50s, in okay shape, and had definitely never done yoga- or perhaps anything outside of her home- before.

If you’ve ever seen me do anything anywhere, you know that I sweat- a lot. If I got paid for every ounce of sweat I produced, I’d be one hell of a rich, saturated gal. Anyway, in this yoga class, even with the fan turned off, I was not schvitzing even in the least bit. By about 10 minutes into the class, the woman in front of me was completely covered in sweat. And I mean completely covered. Her hair was soaking wet. The sweat-o-meter only got higher when we were instructed to balance on one foot and lift the other leg off the floor. This woman could not balance for her life. Limbs went flying in every direction at the speed of light. The instructor, who was standing nearby, gently told “the class” that if we couldn’t balance, we should just take it slow and only lift our leg a small amount off of the floor. No use: the woman’s leg shot up like she was a ballerina and then she just totally wiped out, collapsing in a big, sweaty pile onto her mat.

I was doing okay with not laughing by avoiding looking at her until our next set of exercises. We had to do downward dog or something. As usual, everyone was facing the front of the room, and the instructor was facing us. But I guess that woman in front of me was so disoriented from her balance experience, that she forgot which direction to sit. So there she was, a couple feet away from me, looking straight at me as she panted wildly while we both tried to figure out how to hook our right arm under our legs and grab our other arm. In addition, she started making strange grunts at this point. Well, that was it. I burst out laughing (as I have a tendency to do).

So much for relaxation and increasing my concentration… Yoga, you have won again.