Downward Dog and Other Lies

"Come, you take yoga class. It be good for you. You see, it easy. You like.'

The little Oriental woman who is in my aqua arthritis class invited me. And yes, she really talks that way, that isn't some kind of biased nonsense. She's only been in the USA a very short time and her English isn't that polished yet.

Because she is so nice and because I am trying to figure out just how this gym membership works out for the various classes I'd like to try, I said yes.

I rode the stationery bike for just over 3 miles as the warm-up. I thought I knew what was coming.

Downward dog is code for 'you will hurt in places that even God didn't know you had'. Then, the fun began.

As we went through various moves, positions and maneuvers, our slightly built diminutive instructor talked about how these moves were relaxing and so easy.

As compared with building a space-worthy vehicle from a toothpick and some cotton balls, that may well be true. But the conceptual portion of the class was a universe apart from the reality that aliens who bent in unnatural ways inhabited that mirrored room.

I closed my eye so that I wouldn't be assaulted by the visual image of me and my contorted body to torture my senses. It was bad enough that I was experiencing it both internally and externally. I had no desire to have a permanent visual record of my agony to replay on loop for all eternity.

Even now, several hours later, I am wondering what the point to the various poses really was. Some of them, alleged to stretch various segments of the body, have left a kind of muscular-skeletal agony that is seldom reproduced in a full impact crash with another vehicle. I can attest to that having been in several collisions during my life.

At the end of the class, we were all encouraged to 'lie flat on our backs with our arms stretched out to our sides' so that we 'could enjoy a brief rest'. I confess that mine was more like a spread-eagle pose of complete exhaustion.

Those serene yogi who teach the various yoga positions on television do not sweat. I doubt that their training allows for it since they are all about relaxation, stretching and being so much more than limber.

Since I am neither serene nor yogi-like in my skills, I think I could rival the production of sweat from the last three Preakness winners. I was actually afraid that I might drown in the pool when it came time for that segment of the exercise.

The next time someone encourages you to join a class because you will like it and it will be easy, realize that there are only three reasons they do this.

#1 - they are new to the class themselves and don't want to go alone and since you already share one class, they feel that they are comfortable enough to ask you to attend,

#2 - they are genuinely hoping you will enjoy something new and different,

or, what I consider to be the most logical selection,

#3 - they are the worst in the class at mastering the yoga positions and they have tagged you as the logical replacement for chief laughingstock in the room.

Downward dog is not for wimps and it hurts if you don't do it normally.

I have come to understand that 'yoga' is another 4-letter word. And today it was really naughty.