Yoga People Watching

On Friday I went to yoga for the first time in quite a long time.  Even though I am certainly not hitting the gym hard yet, my legs have been sore.  So I decided to try the Restorative class which I interpreted to be mostly stretching. 

I am becoming more and more facinated with people watching, and yoga is no exception.  I find most people at yoga to have very curious behaviors.  For example, one woman, who was in her forties and clearly out of shape, came to class alone and was wearing jean shorts.  JEAN SHORTS.  This alone baffled me.  You wouldn't wear jeans to the gym, much less to yoga in which you need flexibility and range of motion.  Then I thought, "Kirby, don't be a jerk.  Maybe she doesn't have any other shorts."  But then I countered that thought with, "This class costs $17.  If she can afford to come to yoga then she can afford to go to Wal-Mart and buy a pair of basic shorts."  

There was also a little Philippino couple that came late and instead of splitting up and taking the two clearly open spots, the huddled into a corner and faced their mats perpendicular to everyone else.  They were so close together they couldn't have really done the moves properly.  Someone had to slide their mat back so they could space out a bit.  The couple was also, clearly out of shape.  People of all ages, shapes and sizes come to yoga, and I think that's great, but there are times when I see people who just don't fit into my stereotype of who would want to come to yoga.  This couple was it.  I wondered if the wife was scared to go alone and made the husband come.  

It would be different if the studio was part of a fitness complex where anyone with a membership could sit in on classes, then I wouldn't be surprised to get some unusual characters in there.  I'm always curious what motivates someone non-stereotypical to come to yoga, because frankly, it's not cheap.

Another unsual looking pair were two guys (straight) who came in right before class started and took the two open spots.  I often see guys come alone, or with a girl.  They were in pretty good shape so I guessed they were athletes.  The one guy was next to me and I couldn't help but notice him struggling with the stretching.  He couldn't even straighten one leg completely.  Maybe he's recovering from an injury.  Or his coach told him to work on his flexibility to prevent injury.

The class was fine, but almost a little too chill if you ask me.  The pace was so slow that we didn't even cover that many stretches.  I don't think I'd do that class again.

Anger Management

Yoga and I have been taking a trial separation.  I got annoyed with the girl who had taken over the time slot I frequented.  I gave her the benefit of the doubt, but she was taking over for another girl that I really liked (who was going to freaking India to study yoga) and in all honestly she was doomed to fail, the shoes were too big to fill.  I tried a couple other time slots but eventually I threw my hands up in frustration and decided yoga and I needed some space.

So when my friend asked me to come with her to yoga last night I thought, oh hell why not.  First off, I was in a very bad mood.  Going to the gym and running your ass off or pushing yourself with resistance training is great when you have aggression to work out.  Yoga, for me, is best done when in a positive, focused mood.  Yoga brings up weird emotions.  For example, moves focused on stretching and opening up the hips often bring out feelings of anger in people.  If we store stress in our neck and shoulders, we store anger in our hips.  When I go to yoga in a bad mood, I find it gets amplified.  If it was socially appropriate to throw a tantrum as a 26 year old woman in the middle of a yoga class, I would.

So I’m sulking and half-assing the poses I don’t feel like doing, being a complete baby and I think to myself, “Why are you doing this?”  “Why aren’t you pushing yourself to get through this class?”  “Why are you being a lazy jerk?”  I’m being a pawn to my moods, as usual.  At some point I think I should do fitness again, give it more effort.  But even in that yoga class I didn’t want to push myself, I didn’t care.  I’ve been having a not caring week.  I can’t even decide what topic to do next month because I’m not excited about any of them.  So I thought, make some new topics, what will contribute to your happiness?  I stared at my notebook for a long time, scribbled a few crap ideas down to open up the inspiration flow and nada.  No great ideas.  Nothing.  Once again I felt compelled to whip my notebook across the apartment, throw Flash’s ridiculous pile of a month’s worth of laundry off the balcony and kick that stupid four year old that lives in the apartment next door (who always stands outside our door making barking sounds while she waits for the elevator causing my dog to freak out) in her face.

My name is Kirby, and I have an anger management problem.

The downside of Yoga

The downside of being more aware of your body is that you are more aware of everything that’s wrong with your body.  Yoga makes you very aware of your posture, which muscles are tight and how good your balance is.  Last Sunday at Karma yoga the girl sitting in front of me is what I like to call a bendy straw.  It is my personal opinion that if you get to the level that this girl was at you should not be going to the intermediate classes anymore, you should only go to super advanced classes because all you’re doing is showing off and making everyone else look bad.  She could take every posture above and beyond, bending herself into all kinds of pretzel shapes.  And the crazy part was that she was one of those super tall and thin Amazon types with long blond hair, I swear the girl was probably 6’3”.  She was one of the most flexible people I have ever seen.  Even though it made me feel pretty inadequate, it was something to aspire to.

I AM NOT FLEXIBLE.  To be honest, I can’t even sit cross legged properly.  I’m always jealous of other people in hot yoga class because the front wall is mirrored floor to ceiling (so you can see everyone all at once) and when we are sitting with our legs crossed and most people have their knees on the floor or they have their feet pulled in over their knees and then there’s me, trying to sit with my legs crossed, knees sticking way up.  In hot yoga the other night we did this pose, called Gomukhasana (I think) and it looked something like this:

I could not do it.  The goal is to align your knees one on top of the other, feet out to the side and have both sides of your bum remain on the floor.  I simply could not do it, I couldn’t even come close to getting my butt to sit flat on the floor.  Before I lived with Melissa I lived with a friend of mine, let’s call her Runts.  Runts is now a physiotherapist but was in school when we were roommates.  Runts and her physio friends all had to practice on each other during school everyday so when they would be studying for exams I would sometimes be offered up as a guinea pig, someone new to practice on.  This, like yoga, makes you very aware of what’s wrong with your body.  “Hmm, that’s weird”, is not something you want to hear from someone studying the human body.  Runts told me that when I leaned backwards I bent from the middle of my back instead of my hips, that the triangular bone at the base of my spine was more angled than most people’s (I think she referred to it as mutated) which gave me a deeper curve in my lower back and that I had very little movement in my hips and ankles.  I can now see that she was right about how crappy all my joints are, thanks Runts and yoga.  I’ve always been grateful that I never injured my knees.  I don’t think I know a single person my age that is or was an athlete that hasn’t done some significant damage to their knees.  So knees, since I’ve taken such excellent care of you over the years how about you work properly.  New yoga goal = joint flexibility = bendy straw.

Yoga

Tonight I am going to hot yoga.  One night throughout the week I go to hot yoga at Tri-Yoga.  I will be going to the Yang-Yin class.  The first half is traditional hot yoga and the second half is a much slower pace with a focus on increasing flexibility, holding the postures for a longer period of time.
 
Every Sunday I go to Karma Yoga at Yoga Passage which costs an enormous sum of $2.00.  This class has been very busy the past couple weeks which makes me nervous that it will be packed all winter.  I like the cost, but I don’t like being in a room so packed that you have to stagger your mats so that you don’t smack arms with the person beside you when doing poses.  I keep trying to get a picture at hot yoga but the room is like a sauna and the pictures keep coming out blurry so here are a few from Karma yoga.


I quite enjoy going to yoga.  I like going to a class where someone tells you what to do, and then when you feel like you can’t hold a certain pose long enough you look over and see someone twice your age doing it and you think oh crap well now I have to.  If Karma yoga gets too busy to be enjoyable I will have to look into doing some other sort of class once in a while.