A Return to Yoga

Namaste.

"It's been a long time, old friend," I thought, as I looked down at the floor to my yoga mat.  Almost a year...or was it just over a year?  Either way, it had been too long.  But all that was changing.  As I sat down on my mat, I could feel that familiar peacefulness of a yoga studio washing over me: the dark, low-lit lights that softly flood the room in a deep, shadowy glow; the inviting warmth of the bamboo floors; that peculiar, serene stillness in the air.

As I began my warm-up stretching, I could feel the beads of sweat making their way through my pores and coming to a rest on my face.  My date--oh yes, I should mention that my return to yoga came in the form of a date suggestion by a girl I had just started seeing--sat to my right, eagerly awaiting (I'm sure) what was about to come.  This wasn't your typical beginner yoga class.  Not to sound wimpy and melodramatic, but this was an intermediate level class in a 95-98 degree room (okay, I'll just shut up).

"Don't be afraid to go into child's pose," she'd kept reminding me.  

"Please," I thought as I rolled my eyes, "if anyone's going into child's pose it's not going to be me."  As I'd later learn, I was right in a sense, but we'll get to that.  

By the time the instructor came in, a sufficient pool of sweat had already begun forming on my mat.  As we went into seated position, it recurred to me how inflexible I was--comparable to a slate of granite or a rigid tree--not that my date hadn't informed me of that several times already (that is not a sexual innuendo.  She literally told me how poor my flexibility was).

As we went into our first downward facing dog, the first waterfall of sweat came pouring off my face.  I started worrying about whether I had put enough deodorant on and, arguably more importantly, whether I had drank enough water to avoid going into heatstroke.  Not that passing out in yoga isn't sexy, but I thought I'd save that for a more appropriate time like date six or seven. 

I should mention that there was a mirror in the front of the room, and her and I were right in front of that mirror.  This is important not only because it gave me a chance to check her out while we were doing yoga (let's be honest) and see her smirking at me while she watched me struggle, but also because it enabled me to see what I was supposed to be doing.  Since it was an intermediate class, the instructor walked around the room and gave verbal instructions; and since I'm clearly a beginner in yoga, most verbal instructions required me to look around at other people and see what they were doing.

As the class went on, it became increasingly apparent to myself that I wasn't going to finish without going into child's pose.  My legs were starting to cramp from dehydration, I was becoming light-headed and my yoga mat was beginning to resemble a bog.  

After a brief break in child's pose, I decided to stand start back up, only to find that I hadn't magically regained any of the water that I had lost.  I took a drink from my water bottle, which now felt like a drink from a warm pool, and decided to start back up.  After one more...vinyasa?...I realized I was faced with a major decision:  spend the remainder of class in child's pose, or walk out of the room.    
   
On the one hand, it wouldn't be the worst thing to lie gracefully and admit defeat.  On the other hand, I didn't want to spend 20 minutes lying on the ground in front of my date...at least not in that context.  Using the mirror, I found an opportune moment to slip out of the class while everyone was facing down.  I realize they probably wouldn't have noticed me leaving anyway, but it made me feel better.  

I spent the remaining twenty minutes in the lobby, reading a flyer on classes and times (yes, it only took about 45 seconds to read the whole thing, but I had nothing else in front of me).  When my date come out of the room she was glowing.  Whether it was because she was holding back from laughing at me or just satisfied from her yoga class, who knows?

As I drove home I had to ask myself a few questions: 
Had I failed?  
Sure.  
But did I have fun doing it? 
... I'll refrain from answering that.  
And will I be back?  
Absolutely.  Get ready, yoga; here I come! 

Nataraja

I made a decision.  I'm not going to use the internet as a means to gain understanding about anything yoga.  I'm doing this for two reasons: (1) I want my yoga practice and understandings to be more organic, and (2) relying on my yoga instructors and fellow yogis (this is becoming my new favorite word), as opposed to the internet, will force me to take my practice more seriously lest I should look like a fool for confusing pigeon with half-moon.  Speaking of which, there is a downside to this choice.  Without the ability to check positions and phrases, etc. online, I'm undoubtedly going to get things wrong--this will be especially problematic when I get into learning Sanskrit.

On Tuesday, I attended my first heated-room yoga session.  It wasn't bikram, at least I don't think it was.  It was called Nataraja.  Anyhow, before I signed up, I looked at a brief description of the class (this is before my no-looking-things-up policy was in place).  The description included something about practicing all eight limbs of the yoga practice (nope, I don't know what those limbs are).  At the time, I was using a $25 Gaiam yoga mat that had a tree with falling leaves on it, called the Tree of Life (wow, how cliche--I am the reason why people say yoga is a fad).  As I would come to realize, my yoga practice was going to need an upgrade.

So I came into class and made sure to take a spot in the back corner--I know yoga is a very individual practice, but I'm absurdly self-conscious, and I tend to sweat a lot, so I always look for a spot in the back of the room.  Honestly, before every yoga session I go home and take a shower so I'm nice and clean and smell like Dove extra fresh body wash for men (don't worry, I don't cover myself in cologne)--my mat was probably about three feet behind the girl's mat in front of me, and four feet from the girl's mat to my left, both well out of the way of any potential beads of perspiration (seriously, you guys have no idea how much I sweat).

The instructor for this Nataraja class was a guy.  This was a change from what I was used to, but it definitely helped me focus on the postures and pay attention to detail, whereas with female instructors biology takes over and I find myself checking them out (I am but a man).  Now, this isn't to say that I'm disrobing my female instructors with my eyes.  I'm just pointing out a reality--attractive girls in spandex present a distraction to me.  Case in point, just the thought alone distracted me.

Anyhow, because of my limited yoga-vocabulary, it would be impossible for me to describe the practice itself.  It would sound like, "well, we were in downward facing dog for a while, and then we did some other pose, and that pose was hard, and then after a little while later we came back into downward facing dog.  Oh yeah, there was also this other thing we did right before going back into downward facing dog where we laid face down on the mat."  Despite that vivid description, I can say this about the practice.  It was intense.  Like, seriously intense.  I was so exhausted at one point that I just decided to go into child's pose--where you sort of lay with your knees tucked and face down, admitting to the world you've been defeated while the rest of the class, most importantly the girls surrounding you, continue with the routine and just look at you and laugh (alright, that last part is a bit exaggerated, but they might as well have been).

Now, I'm no Olympic athlete, but I would say I'm in decent shape.  So why was I so exhausted?  Well, earlier I mentioned that I sweat a lot (like beads of sweat dripping off my face when I get done running on a hot day sweat a lot).  By mid-practice of Nataraja , when I would go into downward facing dog, I would have sweat dripping off my face comparable to a faucet at it's lowest setting without individual droplets.  My mat, which, as it turns out, was a relatively cheap mat (way to research yoga mats before purchasing, Tyler), wasn't designed to hold up to the monsoon-like volume of water that my body was shedding.  Consequently, I couldn't even hold my grip while I was in downward-facing dog.  My hyper-saturated, previously grippy mat might as well have been a freshly waxed lane of a bowling ally, which, if you've never made the mistake of crossing the line while rolling the ball and came crashing down (cause: alcohol), is pretty damn slippery.  

And not only was my mat insufficient to retain any grip, it was also insufficient to absorb all of my sweat.  By the end of practice, I was pretty much sitting in a pool of my own perspiration, on a water-logged green island, surrounded by visible sea of water stretching about two feet in every direction.  How my body did not shut down is miraculous; how much my body sweated during Nataraja was just embarrassing.  Needless to say, I did not ask out either of the girls who were seated beside me.  Not that, "hey I'm Tyler and the puddle you're standing in my body's perspiration" isn't a great opening line, but I just wasn't feeling up to it. 

Now, this practice wasn't a completely failure to me.  Instead, it presented something more of a crossroads.  On the one hand, I could settle for just being the guy who sweats so profusely in yoga class that the business downstairs complains of a leaking water pipe.  On the other hand, I could take this as an opportunity to upgrade my yoga gear and, while still looking like I have a thermo-regulation disorder, maybe avoid some of the shame that came along with using deficient equipment.       

      

Namaste

I'll be honest.  I still don't know what that word means (note to self: Google-search "namaste" after posting).  You'd think after five or six classes, each of which ended with the instructor saying namaste to the class, and the class replying the same, I would have either (a) asked somebody from class what it meant--this would have been a great conversation starter, (b) looked it up on google, or (c) experienced one of those legendary yoga moments where one instantaneously acquire universal knowledge.  Regardless, I will soon know the meaning of "namaste."

Hello, and welcome to my yoga blog.  Or, in an effort to be yogic, perhaps I should rephrase and say "welcome to OUR yoga blog."  As you've probably gathered, I know nothing about yoga.  I have no idea whether changing "my" to "our" was yogic.  In fact, up until ten minutes ago, when I looked up the definition of "yoga," I didn't even know what the word "yoga" meant.

Anyhow, my name is Tyler, and this is Yogiology.  As far as I can tell--which isn't very far--yoga has a lot to do with achieving some sort of balance or peace within oneself.  I should throw out a disclaimer right now: Do not take anything I say regarding the subject of yoga as true.  And if, for some strange reason, you do, let me just say... seriously?  Did you even bother to read the first two paragraphs?

So Yogiology, for purposes of this blog, is a collection of my reflections on my yoga practice and development.  In all likelihood, it's going to become a gathering point for embarrassing moments in my life and an explanation for shitty grades come finals.  I should throw out there that I'm a third-year law student, I'm 25 and I recently found an interest in yoga.  In addition, I'm sick of law school and felt like this would be an effective way to spend my time in lectures (i.e., writing blog posts about yoga--potential future employers, I disclaim that last statement).

At this point, I will discontinue my rambling, and appropriately bid you adieu with a word that I'm soon to learn:

Namaste