#yogaproblems

I have officially just done three things that I have never done before, all before noon today. #1 I went to Hot Yoga. #2 I used a hash tag (loving called the pound sign back in my day) in the title of this post. #3 I made a word play off of the "first world problems" that I see popping up all the time these days. News flash, I do not fully understand any of these three things, I'm not that hip. But here I am doing 'em anyways. Let me know if I mess them up.

Hot Yoga. Oh, Hot Yoga. Take a seat. This is gonna be a weird/wild ride. I would like to preface this post with two disclaimers. This first one is that I went to Hot Yoga to be supportive of my Mom going to Hot Yoga. I gifted her a membership to give her something to do for herself, something she NEVER does. I wanted to keep encouraging her by going with her on the weekends when I could. The reasons I go back may be totally different. The second disclaimer is this; I have an extremely sensitive sniffer. Unless I have a cold and I can't smell anything, I am smelling everything.

Sooooooo, I take back every good body image statement I have made about myself since the dawn of time. Yoga brought up some issues. I remembered vividly why I don't like going to gyms. There are mirrors and people. My workout room doesn't have any mirrors. I occasionally catch a glimpse of my reflection in the window, but no mirrors. Holy s#!& I am fat. And I don't even think I am as fat as I was, so that means I was incredibly fat. Why, for the love of Pete, didn't anyone tell me??? I would have been a little hurt, but in the long run I think I would have been grateful. Crap. My arm waddle is beyond impressive. I will be wearing a t-shirt instead of a tank top tomorrow. My apologies to everyone in the class today for you having to witness my arm waddle. My gut prevents me from getting all the way into many of the poses. Some things I am flexible at, others I may be hopeless at. For instance, the thought that any part of my head will EVER be in contact with any part of my legs is laughable at best. Watching myself try and get into some of these poses made me almost want to cry. I would never in front of all those people, but it did make me sad for myself. The upside, I am incredibly proud of my mom!! She has 20 years on me and she was giving it hell. I wouldn't expect anything less from her, once she gets on something she is a dog on a bone, so I know that she will have great success at this if she keeps with it. In regards to people. So, before the class  you lay there on your mat and get yourself acclimated to the heat. As the room continued to fill up I could feel my anxiety level increasing. All these people are going to be able to see me struggling my way through this class. They are all going to see my fat rolls hold me back. They are all going to see my arms waddle when I raise them for EVERY SINGLE POSE. Remember "comparison is the thief of joy", well I let myself get robbed big time this morning. There was tons of chicas to compare myself to. Surprisingly enough, half of the class was men, so I got to compare myself to them too. Interesting, and also intimidating. I would say that of the dudes in the room they were probably split pretty evenly between being older and younger than me. Moral of the story, Yoga knows no age. Yoga also knows no modesty. Some of the outfits were basically underwear. I get it, it was hot in there. I do not believe that you will ever witness me doing Hot Yoga in my underwear. Rock on to those of you that are comfortable enough that you can, Pretty sure that won't ever be me though.

Now, for the second disclaimer. That room smelled BAD. It smelled like urine to me. I'm sure it is from the epic amounts (gallons) of sweat that have leached into the indoor/outdoor carpet that is in there. But it was almost more than I could handle. I will stick it out and I will go again because I love my Mom, but it was hard for me to breathe deeply from the stink. And, I am certain that after sweating that much, I too stunk. Nature of the beast. But the steamy stench in that room was rough on my olfactory senses.

Worst nightmare. I had to stop at the store (WINCO) after Hot Yoga. The day before Super Bowl no less. I was literally soaked from head to toe. A) It would have done me no good to change my clothes after Hot Yoga because I didn't stop sweating for another 45 minutes. B) I would die before I would change my clothes in front of a room full of strangers. Call me prude, but there is just no way. What is the absolute last thing that you would want if you were soaking wet with your own sweat and had to run into a public place??? You guessed, running in to someone that you know. Of course I did. She was very sweet and told me I didn't look bad. I know for a fact that I looked like a sunburned, gluttonous, drowned rat. So, short of passing out in class, I managed to hit some serious low points this morning in my journey.

You are probably thinking that I hate Hot Yoga right now. Wrong. I am grateful to it for bringing some things to light for me. I grateful to it for showing me where I am lacking in areas. One of them being the ability to lie still for two minutes. I still don't love the smell, but if that is something I need to overcome so that I may overcome some real issues, then so be it. We'll see how my week goes, I may try and make it more than just the weekend. It was cheapest for me to buy the 20 sessions in 20 days package, so I have unlimited access to their studio for the next 19 days. Stay tuned.