Start where you begin

One of the best parts of moving to a new city is that you can reinvent yourself. You can make a decision to be a certain kind of person and your new friends won't know you've changed. For instance, I have recently decided to become a woman who does yoga regularly. This transition would be much more difficult if I were still in Brooklyn, where all my friends know how graceless and lazy I am.

I now am a member at All One Yoga studio in Boston. I even bought a mat. I am a woman who owns her own yoga mat.

Here's my issue with yoga, though -- the stuff the instructors say to you during class. They say things that would only make sense if you were high. Which I don't think you are supposed to be while doing yoga. Today my instructor Mary said encouragingly to the class: "Start where you begin." Say wha? Should I also end where I finish?

Sometimes I feel a little like Morales in a Chorus Line describing acting class. I tried super hard today in my Hot Hatha class to "find the center of my center" but I'm just not convinced I actually did.

Some of the poses also need to be renamed. Here are my suggestions:

Child's Pose = Hangover Pose

Downward Dog = Backdoor Pose



You've Got to Be Fucking Kidding Me Pose

The other people in class can be problematic too. Today I was stationed behind two girls that I will call Hotshot Bitches.

Wait, shit, yoga is all about peace and positive energy and relaxation. I take it back. They are not Hotshot Bitches who show off how flexible they are and go into the poses before the instructor even names them. They are not like that at all.

There's also usually a token male in the class and today was no exception. Token Male was also the loudest breather in the room. He sounded like he was trying to extinguish the Olympic torch with each exhale.

There was, however, one person in class that I felt very positively about: Girl Who Was Even More Hopeless Than Me. Bless her heart, she kept falling over in simple poses like Warrior 1. Tree pose? Fuggetaboudit.

But the most embarrassing part of today's class came toward the end, when we were finished with standing poses and were on the floor. At one point, Mary told us to lie on our stomachs and place our hands under our bodies near the pelvis.

Think about that for a second.

Now, as I mentioned on this blog, I already have anxiety dreams about accidentally masturbating in public. So this pose was really weirding me out. Then I was supposed to lift my legs or something and press my hands somewhere (the floor? my crotch?) but I was so worried about it looking like I was having an intimate moment that I totally failed. And due to my angle on the floor, I couldn't even sneak a peek to see what the Hotshot Bitches were doing.

Maybe tomorrow's Vinyasa class will be better. For now, I'm going to find the center of my center the way I usually do it: