Namaste

For Madison's CAS, part of her school requirement in the IB program, she chose to learn yoga and signed up at the YMCA to take a class. Because I have to drive her there I joined too hoping yoga would help my back. The Y offers various yoga classes with names like "Flow" and "Hatha" which meant nothing to us, and the description after each one didn't really help. We went to the class in the evening because that is the class Madison looked into a few months ago. It was the "Hatha" yoga.

The first time we went we were running late. I should say, Madison was late. Madison is always running late for things and it is something she claims she is working on, but I have yet to see results. By that I mean that when she makes events on time it is because others have awakened her, harped on her, and yelled and screamed at her. By the time we got there the class had started. It is held in this tiny room with only one window that leads to the hallway. One side of the room is covered with ceiling to floor mirrors and has a wooden bar attached so I'm guessing this room is used for a small ballet group. The yoga teacher had left the door open for stragglers. It was pitch black inside except for a battery operated lantern that gave off zero light for seeing anything. We entered and realized that there was only one spot left on the floor and so Madison took it and I was left to work out in the gym.

The second class we got to early. The room was being emptied of art work that camp kids had done that day and so we all sat outside waiting. By the time the teacher got there we had come to the conclusion that there was no way we would all fit into this room and so we moved down the hall to this nice, big, airy room with windows to the outside as well as floor to ceiling windows on two sides that helped to open up things. I put my mat at the back of the room, which ended up as the front of the room after the teacher decided to move...right next to me. The lights went off and the lantern and music came on and she asked the class who was new.

Now I have done yoga before. Once. Years ago. My friend Sharon and I took an evening yoga class at the wellness center. She wanted to try it, and I went along for support. It was taught by this short, muscular, buff guy who was very serious about yoga. The class consisted of older students, we were the youngest, she in her late twenties and me in my thirties, and it was a damn hard class. I didn't have any trouble, however, because I was young and I worked out every day back then so my arms and legs were strong enough to hold me. The class was very serious with everyone breathing loudly, working their core, and their mind and spirit. Sharon and I did a lot of face making as we twisted our bodies into odd shapes as if we were in a game of Twister. At one point when we were bringing our head to our toes with our hands wrapped around our legs, the man in front of us farted. It was a nice release of air, but it wasn't quiet. Not one person reacted. I was bent, staring at the floor, when I heard it and I knew better then to look over at Sharon. I had to keep telling myself not to laugh, that this was a part of yoga, that good for him that he didn't give a shit about farting in a room full of people, but I so desperately wanted to release my own air by laughing. The more I thought about what Sharon would do if I looked at her the harder it got not to laugh. Sharon, too, was having the same issues and every once in a while a snicker would come out of her and then out of me, and then we would have to cough and try again to relax. We did it. I still to this day don't know how we did it, but we did. After class the instructor, a man who I ended up knowing, suggested we start with an easier yoga class, this one being one for more experienced students. We chatted with him about yoga for a while and then left, and as soon as we got outside into the fresh air, we broke up laughing. We laughed and laughed and laughed. And we never went back. Ah, youth.

I raised my hand as one of the newbies in this yoga class. There were four of us in there and so she taught the class by explaining every pose and flowing each one into the next. We started out standing and by the time we got down to the floor I was drenched in sweat, my mat was drenched in my sweat, and I was huffing and puffing. It was depressing. My arms were shaking from trying to hold my overweight body. My knees were aching from the various twists. I was just so grateful to be sitting that I almost cried. The rest of the workout was more along the lines of what I needed with stretching, but I still could not even get all the way down into the child's pose. Still, when it was all over I felt free. As if something inside of me had shifted. I felt like I had really pushed out all of the worry and embraced my inner strength to open myself to happiness. Both Madison and I did a little bit of crying on the way home.

The third class was back inside the little, one window room and we were all packed in like sardines. I was actually not even in a row with people, but stuffed in the back by some weights that I kept hitting with my feet when she made us raise our legs. I was terrified I would jolt one loose and that it would fall down on top of the woman behind me. I also could not relax with the horrible smell of stinky feet which permeated the room, and my mind kept wandering to why we had started out on the floor (class had already begun when we got there) and whether or not I had been wrong on the start time of the class. It was not a good class for me, and I would have ended my yoga career then and there if Madison hadn't forced me to try again.

This time we went to the Flow yoga class during the day. As usual, we got there late and the small room was too packed for either one of us. We went instead to the gym where I worked out my frustrations with my daughter and her lateness, and the two of us agreed that I should carry on with life and not worry about her being a part of the things she wasn't getting up for. We worked out for an hour and then went back to the small room where a second Flow yoga class was to start, and it was not nearly as packed and the people in the class were very friendly and chatty. We all got to spread out around the room and the teacher introduced Madison because she is so thrilled to have a youngster who is getting school credit for yoga. The class was all over the place, I thought, with the teacher doing poses that seemed to literally pop up in her head. I found it disorganized from a teaching perspective, but have since learned that there is no sequence to follow in this type of yoga and that it is up to the quirks of the teacher and the students. I found it much like the first class in that I was drenched in sweat and huffing and puffing. I didn't have that internal experience that I had the first time, but a few days later my body felt more limber and longer.

I decided that I should try to work with some of the poses myself during our off yoga days to try and improve my strength. I researched yoga and found that Hatha is for beginners and that "you won't sweat" in this class. Oh boy. I started doing some yoga after I shower in the evening and can already feel my stretches going farther then before, and since I'm in charge of what poses I'm doing I find that I'm not sweating. I also slow things down and work more on my breathing as I do the poses. I'll probably try a few more classes with Madison to see if things improve and to learn more poses. Then I can work at home where I can feel better about my yoga farting. Yep, that I think comes with age.