“My overly uptight, inflexible days are over”…is what I thought.
I started practicing yoga, taking two classes a week, as part of my New Year’s Resolution. It all started as a way to say I exercise regularly, while in reality, I would just be doing glorified stretching, but most importantly to actively teach myself how to fucking relax. As a crazy Type A, I needed this. I needed to wake up in the morning not as a scheduled, overworked psycho, but as a calm, fulfilled person.
I’m here to tell you, it’s not working out.
I feel like I’m starting the slow, awkward, angst filled breakup with yoga.
We just lead very different lives; we aren’t compatible on a deep level; it’s not you, yoga, it’s me;
But I’m signed up for the long haul, dedicated to yoga for a solid four month contract. So for these next couple months I have to muddle through and we’ll see who gets sole custody of the mat (Spoiler, it won’t be me). However, until that day I might as well share my abundant struggles and perhaps one or two triumphs, since it can’t be awful every day, right?
I believe it was doomed from the beginning. On the day of my first yoga class ever, I left my apartment 15 minutes early (Type A coming out) hoping to get a nice parking spot and a place close to the instructor so I could follow along as a noob. Once I reached my car in the parking lot, I keyed into it and the lock wouldn’t budge. My door and lock were frozen solid. Hooray for February in Pennsylvania, you’re the worst.
I walked around to the passenger side and wiggled it open after a minute and crawled over to use the power locks, no movement. I pulled and pulled on the knob, it wasn’t going to open.
I couldn’t drive my car while being locked inside by a frozen door! If my car spun off the road into a ditch, I would surely die in there! Overdramatic, yes, but possible. So I called a friend, and they picked me up. During that entire first class all I could think about was that damn car and how I was going to get home. This was supposed to be relaxing, grr!
While we were meditating, “focusing our intentions”, which is probably the weirdest experience. We sit there, eyes closed in the dark, and breath heavily while we think about our lives; like a very passive therapy session. I couldn’t focus on anything but that frozen door.
But class continued, and learned my first downfall (literally down fall) of my yoga skills.
I cannot balance on one foot.
While setting up for Tree pose, where most people rest their foot on their inner thigh or at least their inner calf, I can manage a little kickstand off of my other ankle so that I have a foot and a half on the ground at all times. I will forever be a grounded individual.
When I try to raise one leg, I hop, jump, and wiggle my grounded foot until the other foot falls to the ground. I’ve gotten so close to falling on my ass so many times, it’s incredible. It always happens when I’m “focusing my intentions” so hard that I start to tumble forward and catch myself before my face hits the wood floor (only a lucky person would land on the mat).
And that was just day one.
My second yoga class was the real kicker. Let me paint the picture for you.
Now 8:50am may not seem like an ungodly hour, but it is for me. I haven’t been anywhere before 9:00am in years, call me lazy or a night owl, I don’t care. But my commitment to this class was supposed to be life changing, so I thought 8:50am could become my time of peace, my nirvana.
Anyway, on my second day of class my 8:00am alarm seemed to come much earlier than I expected; I woke up, showered, dressed quickly, packed up all of my stuff and went straight out the door. It’s a 30 minute production. I made it through the class, sweated through my sports bra;
Boob sweat is another evil that needs to be addressed more often, it’s the worst kind of sweat and nobody wants to talk about it or find the cure. #SaveTheTatasFromSweat
But back to the class, something just didn’t feel right.
The class wasn’t horrible, but something was definitely off.
Hours later when I changed out of my yoga pants, after running errands and whatnot, there it was, the tag in the front. They had been on backwards all day. The constant wedgies and baggy front all made sense now! 8:00am Sierra just didn’t have the courtesy to check the direction of the pants before just throwing them on our body.
From then on, I knew I wasn’t going to catch a break with this yoga thing. I just can’t win, so I might as well share it with the world.
Comment with your most embarrassing yoga stories, and I’ll keep sharing mine.
Namaste, assholes.
Photo Credit: tangentialism via flickr
