Sweating for the Wedding, Again

When a couple friends asked if I wanted to go to yoga with them a few weeks ago, I immediately agreed. I need to get in shape - not just because I'm getting married or because I have the upper body strength of a broom, but because 80-year-old Gladys keeps lapping me on Mall-Walking Mondays. It's embarrassing. But still, if I must exercise, I like to make it as relaxing as possible.*

So one Thursday evening, we rolled on up to an unassuming yoga studio next to a crepe restaurant. It took all my willpower not to veer off for a crepe or two, but I resisted and walked into the studio feeling pretty good about myself already. I'm a fitness queen! I thought smugly.

Most of the ladies were already there with their mats unrolled, so prepared. The lights were turned off and the ceiling fans were still; the air was thick and heavy. All was silent except for the low, soothing music and the hypnotic voice of the instructor. As I took off my shoes, the lesson began.

I quietly paid for a class and grabbed an extra mat, wondering how many other sweaty feet had touched it and eager to add my own foot sweat to the mix. I looked around for a spot in the back, but there was none.

"There's room up here," the instructor said, so serenely that I almost didn't hear her.

This is my nightmare.

Shame-faced, I made my way to the front. "I'm sorry," I whispered to nobody in particular as I tried to unroll my mat as unobtrusively as possible. "I'm so sorry for what's about to happen."

Up there in the front, I was surrounded by what I can only assume were professional yogis whose day job is Background Exerciser for a workout video.

"O, hi! This your first time?"

There's a reason I like to do yoga in the comfort of my own living room. Nobody looks at me funny if I grunt a little or shout out, "Are you FREAKING KIDDING ME?!" Plus, I can stop the video any time I want to take a little breather or a snack break. At home, I keep the temperature a cool 71 degrees so that I never break a sweat.

This class was more than I bargained for.

It wasn't a hot yoga class, but the heat from all those bodies was overwhelming. I forgot my water in my bag, way back in the shoe cubbies near the door. I'm pretty sure I should have stretched to prepare for all the stretching, and I neglected to bring a sweat towel, because who sweats in a yoga class?

Apparently I do. A lot. Those mats are dangerous when wet - it felt like doing yoga on a slip 'n slide. But whenever I glanced around to reassure myself that everyone else was struggling too, all I saw were tiny, fit women with cute, printed yoga pants and no sweat stains in sight. That's how it goes at the front of the room, I guess. My only solace was the lone man a few rows back who was huffing like a steam engine. At least I was suffering in silence.

I'm not sure why downward dog seems to be the rallying point of every yoga class. The instructor kept coming back to it, making it fancier every time: Put one arm up! Now one leg! And the other one! Look ma, no hands! Everyone's getting this, right? It's easy! 

I wanted to shout out excuses, like "I'm not weak! My outer hips are tensing up and it is excruciating! Howzabout we do something to stretch those out before we start flinging our legs up in the air, huh?!"

As the temperature rose, so did my temper. Every time the instructor stopped to walk around and correct our form, I grew increasingly bitter. Oh, what's that? Too good to hold your own poses, missy? I thought viciously. Can't take the heat? 

I don't talk great smack when I'm that sweaty.

Feeling faint, I finally had to excuse myself to fetch my giant, plastic, noisy water bottle and gulp half of it down, skulking behind the shoe cubbies until my heart rate slowed a little. I looked wistfully outside and almost made a break for it. But I'd gotten a ride there, and it would've been a long walk home. So I reluctantly returned to my mat.

At last we came to savasana, corpse pose. The name is accurate, for I wished that I might die as I lay there in the sticky, still air. I looked up at the ceiling fans, trying to make them turn by sheer force of will. At some point I think the heat overcame me, and I gained a sense of divine clarity. I am a ship on the ocean, I realized. I am a barnacle stuck fast to a buoy, bobbing away on the waves. I'm a sea cow....

"Is everyone warm enough?" the instructor asked.

I laughed, the salty taste of my own sweat on my lips.

And then I died.



*One time while doing yoga my heart rate dropped so low that my FitBit thought I was asleep. That's my kind of exercise.