My Misconception of Yoga

Yoga: My trials and tribulations (Wow, that sounds whiny and middle class)

I was very late in getting into yoga, because……well, because I hate everything that’s new and super trendy. So, all these years that people have been “oohing and aahing” over yoga, I’ve been sneering at them and their efforts to convert me…and avoiding yoga at all costs (not dissimilar to how I started reading The Davinci Code last year. Same reason).
I attempted to jump on the yoga bandwagon in secret when I was in high school. I was all ready a member at the YMCA and they offer classes for free, so I optimistically put my name on the yoga class list and showed up one day. I’m going to try to find the best way to start these next sentences, so bare with me. There’s a lot to be said…The “meat and potatoes,” so to speak, is that the yoga instructor was the hippiest dirty hippy the world has ever known. Now, sometimes (operative word=sometimes) I love hippies. I love the hippies that get stoned and sing songs and are happy and free-spirited….and don’t protest on street corners, fooling passersby with the façade of their dreadlocks and second-hand clothing. Anyway, this woman was clearly opposed to any form of bathing and shaving. It was like the perfect storm of body odor- -her underarms, her vagina (yes, vagina), and even her breathe. I made the mistake of identifying myself as a first timer…so, she felt the need to stand by me and critique every move while standing in positions that were the most conducive to me benefiting from the tsunami of odors. Have you ever walked into a damp basement or shed and your lungs adamantly refuse to inhale? This is what it was like….except the painful irony is that yoga is all about breathing. Breathing deeply. Every lungful I could taste all of the foul molecules that were just emanating off this woman, and on several occasions the shining achievement of “downward facing dog” was not vomiting on my mat. Needless to say, this yoga experience was traumatic and after I went home and showered and shaved….several times…..I wrote off yoga as terrible and a fad that I would not be endorsing any time soon.
Fast forward a few years. Now I’m 19 and I’m visiting my favorite aunt and uncle in Seattle for College Spring Break. My aunt had recently found herself a part of this never-ending yoga trend and she was really excited to try to convert me. I appease her and attend her regular yoga class. This class may have lacked the luster of a hygiene-protesting instructor, but where it fell short there, it more-than-compensated in the Circue Du Soleil-like style that this new instructor employed. We were in headstands and backbends the whole damn class….but still, I had limited knowledge of yoga, so now I was under the impression that yoga is like the Special Olympics of gymnastics. Still not impressed.
Years have passed and sort of washed away most of my ill feelings towards yoga, and again, I give yoga a chance. I’ve completely written off the first two classes as “yoga trickery” and have attempted to completely forget the experiences. So, one day during my lunch hour, I walk three blocks to my gym to attend the noon yoga class. The whole way I’m thinking about yoga: stretching and relaxing in a dimly lit room while an instructor encourages me to “find my inner peace.” I’m excited. It’s been a stressful day at work, and frankly, I’m excited for the opportunity for the Boot Camp of Relaxation.
I get to the gym and find that the room is dimly lit. Check. The yoga instructor doesn’t smell of feet, BO, and patchouli. Check. Other people seated around me are preemptively stretching. Wow(!) this might be something I could really be into, as it has conformed to all the visions in my yoga-specific rose-colored glasses!!!
Wrong. The teeny tiny, flexible instructor starts us off with some light stretching…but I quickly learn that every position ends with “plank” into “upward facing dog” into “downward facing dog.” In short….you do thousands of fucking push-ups through the whole class. For those of you who played high school football….these moves done in this order is like doing slower, more graceful belly-whackers….over and over and over.
The push-up segment ends and then begins lunge-a-palooza. You lunge and lunge and lunge until your legs shake to the point that you’re fantasizing about doing more push-ups. I broke a friggin’ sweat.
Then, when you think you can’t resent this yoga trickery any longer….the instructor has you lay down on the mats, and she reads you a short comforting story from Buddhist proverbs. Something like, “There is no set path in life, where you walk is the path” and then she tells you the exhale out all of the bad and she tells you to enjoy your day. I was confused, because despite all of the abuse via stretching, lunging, and push ups….I felt good; better somehow. I felt like how Tina Turner must have felt when Ike put his belt back on and was like, “Hey babe, you know I love you.” So, that’s what yoga is….it’s not about flips and dirty hippies. It’s about ending the nuanced aerobic abuse on the upside…so that your brain is tricked into allowing you to return for more in the future.