Thing #3 Yoga Class

Oh, Lord, yoga. I have resisted yoga forever. I once got into a little… altercation with a yoga instructor on one of my ultimate Frisbee teams. She, of course, thought that yoga was wonderful. I thought… that yoga would make me too flexible to run right, and too antsy. I don’t want to sit still to meet God, people. I find Him better when I am moving rhythmically. Plus it’s so… New Agey. Something. She kept insisting that I was wrong and needed to take yoga, and since I can be stubborn I kept gently agreeing that I was sure it was wonderful and equally sure that it was not for me. I honestly don’t think she spoke to me for the rest of the season. Anyway, I have a total attitude about it and I’m not sure what possessed me to go so early in this experiment.

Maybe it was the constant stretching I’ve had to do with my trainer to keep my knee from becoming a brick of pain. Maybe it’s reading about it in the five (yes, five) fitness magazines to which I subscribe and read faithfully every morning over breakfast. Maybe I’m finally facing the personal symbolism of having worked hard in my physical and mental life toward strength, endurance, and balance but *not* yet flexibility.

Whatever. I went.

And it was actually OK.

Here’s the other thing – not only had I never taken a yoga class, I had never taken *any* kind of class at the gym. I had no clue what I was doing. I asked Sally about it, and I went early and just confessed to the instructor that I was 100% brand-spanking new and clueless. She helpfully told me not to hide at the back of the class, but sit up front so I could see her. She also told me a little of what to expect – a quicker series of movements at the beginning that I may or may not be able to follow, and then a set of slower movements. She also showed me where the mats were.

An aside – I have a yoga mat on which I used to half-heartedly attempt to do strength exercises at home. It was filthy. I had showered with it the night before, but it the next day it was filthy *and* wet, so I went to the class secretly hoping they’d have a mat I could use. They did.

The upshot of the class was that I held my own. My hamstrings are still tight as… something really, really tight. But I could follow along OK, and I was surprisingly uncompetitive with myself or my classmates. Not that yoga is competitive. I am, though, so I was sort of surprised when the instructor would offer ways to make it harder and I just wouldn’t. And when it got too hard or what have you, I just said to myself “I did not come here to work this hard. I came here to get flexible.” And I’d ramp it back a little. (Also, I knew I was meeting with my trainer afterward and that made it easier to pursue flexibility and not strength.) And I spent almost no time comparing myself to the elastic people who dotted the room, or the stiff people, either. I admire those elastic people. (OK, I *kind of* admire them. Amazed and bewildered is a better word. Who can twist around like that? And why? But God bless ‘em.) I sympathize with the stiff people. But I didn’t really compare, and that made the class way more fun.