Serenity in the city

I go to a downtown gym three days week and do a combination of running, spinning, weights and socializing.  I have never been athletically inclined and until my mid-20s was really, really thin.  Fast forward fifteen years and the only running I was doing was down the block to the wine store for more Cabernet Sauvingnon.   

Yesterday I took a yoga class for the first time in more than eight years.  I quickly remembered why I gave it up.  First, I hate to look at lots of bare feet—it freaks me out.  They eyes are not the gateway to the soul; the feet are.  You can tell a lot about a person by their feet.  A plain looking person will sometimes have very elegant, well-cared for feet which leads me to believe they have unsuspected depth.  Conversely, if a great-looking person has ugly feet, it’s nature’s way of balancing shit out.   The woman next to me yesterday had especially heinous feet—very natural, and I mean that in the worst sense of the word, sans pedicure or even a bi-monthly buffing down of the heels.  Plus people touch their feet then touch the communal mats and other stuff which is pretty hard for a self-confessed germaphobe to handle.  And someone smelled like garlic.  Not an everything-bagel-for-breakfast sort of smell, but a huge-helping-of-garlicky pasta-for-dinner sort of smell, where it’s spilling out of one’s pores.  Trapped in a small, dimly-lit room with the feet and unidentifiable Garlic Girl, I was miserable.  At least it was only a 45 minute class, I thought. 

The teacher is the sort of being who insists on declaring the names of all the poses ALL THE TIME so it was Tadasana down into Chaturanga then into Trikonasana so I feel as if I am taking a class in Bombay and not Baltimore, despite the presence of Under Armour apparel surrounding me.  I’m sure she means well, but I have a degree in International Studies, not Sanskrit and have little yearn to learn it.  In fact, there’s so little that I like about yoga.  Devotees are all about The Breathing, the inhalation and the exhalation, so the room is full of people that sound like they’re having sex.  There’s jargon I just don’t get—how exactly to open one’s pelvis?  How does one breathe through one’s belly button?  Or when bent in half, pull said belly button back to the thighs?  Most of the time I’m just hanging there, faking it.  The teacher is clearly living The Yoga Life which I can only presume does not include wolfing down marshmellows dipped in Nutella upon returning home from class like I did.  I just can’t identify with someone that is so clearly, well, whole.  I hope she has some sort of vice, like Jack Daniels or prosciutto eaten on buttered bread, but I doubt it.  She probably eats ten almonds instead of eight when she wants to get crazy.  I know I’m being judgmental, but this is my blog, dammit.

My goal for this class is to loosen up all the joints that have locked up from a decade hunched over a laptop.  I’m not looking for Clarity or Serenity, and with my bad attitude I’ll never find that at the gym anyway.  A wine bar, maybe.  In class we did this move where, sitting with legs straight out, we were all supposed to grab our big toe (again with the feet!) and pull the leg back as if it were a hunter’s bow.  Riiiiiiight.  Not my cuppa tea, but my back does feel looser (all that breathing that my shoulders were doing, apparently) and so I admit, I’ll be back next week.  With a package of antibacterial wipes.