Dude, yoga hurts!

Hmm, seems I may have made a mistake with this yoga business.


Ok, so I know people are going to laugh at me, and not in a I- solicited- it way. I totally thought yoga would be relaxing. I was sort of tipped off by a comment from sugar-n-spice, but did not fully process the information until later. This is what I thought. I believed when my little 45 minutes of class were over, I would feel as though I had stretched out my entire body after a nice long nap. This is not the case.



I went to my first yoga class last week. I went of course, to the wrong building, so had to make another trip across town and be late. Stress. The first day. And when I finally got in and looked around the darkened room, what I saw was no place for me to go. I tried to cram myself in to the back, I was even willing to scoot myself into smelling and seeing distance of another persons naked feet to avoid the wide open range of space in the front (and I HATE feet). So the little perky girl in the front hollers out- ''There is no more room back there, you will have to come up here''. To THE FRONT of the room! Next to PERKY girl, who is the instructor. BAH!



I unrolled my little mat in the front of the class where I could not see anyone but the PERKY girl to my side. Now, I don't know anything about yoga really. I thought it looked what, non stressful I suppose. And after all I had done pregnant yoga in the privacy of my own home so I thought I understood what was going to happen. PERKY girl twists around randomly sticking out an appendage or two and saying things like, ''Plank" and "downward facing dog" and then just hanging there for minutes at a time. It is hard!!! Really hard, and intense. See, when I was doing the dvd yoga, I would fast forward over boring parts, and anything that took too long, or hurt. And I rested a LOT, while the nice ladies on the DVD did most of the hard stuff for me. Now stop laughing and pay attention, I think my biggest error came from doing most of it on my bed or holding on to something big. Turns out this yoga business uses a lot of balance. Balance is NOT a great area for me and I sit down a lot because of it. No sense falling over all the time, I will go ahead and just sit before I tip over. Save some trouble. Thinking ahead.



So I cannot see myself, being way too far to the side and front to catch the mirror (probably a blessing) and I cannot see anyone behind me either. I am trying to imitate The Perk but she is doing this stuff and I am trying desperately to keep my balance and not humiliate myself although my muscles are quite literally quivering and NOT IN A GOOD WAY and I am thinking oh crap I may have misread that little flyer about this being a beginner to intermediate class and mistook watching my DVD for actually participating. I despise being in the front of anything, I try to be last or at the end or in the back. So half of my focus is going towards the moves and the other half is trying to imagine how I look from behind doing this stuff using a big chunk of concentration on not offending all the people back there and not humiliating myself what with the no balance and the quivering and all. I would guess I looked like a rather dense Weeble (weebles wobble but they don't fall down- thankfully), and not as I fantasized, like Samantha and Carrie (Sex and the City). (NO I do not believe I watch an excess of televised entertainment thanks for asking).



The good news is there were obviously a few people who made the same mistake as I, and there was in particular another woman who looked confused and off balance too. I am going to stake out a spot by her this next time. About half the class was men, and as happens in this crazy town, several people knew each other. But not me.



So when the class was over, I asked the little Perky girl if she could bring me some information about what I am supposed to be doing. See, I thought we would be learning about the poses and stuff and gently moving in to the actual doing of the poses maybe in a few weeks. It was not until I got into my car that my poor underutilized muscles stopped vibrating -again, not in a good way- and I went home to rest. I have been trying to rest ever since. It has been painful and I believe I heard my body creak like a haunted house. This yoga business is HARD.



It is probably good that they made me pay up ahead of time. I go back tomorrow. The pain finally subsided yesterday.