Yogi's Option: Broken Bones or Dislocated Joints

When I was fat, I used to think that I would get some sort of daily work out by waking up at four in the morning and watching television yoga. Never would I actually participate, but watching made me feel like I was taking a step in a healthy direction. This was my yoga exposure for the longest time, until I actually did P90X yoga and possibly fainted after the two hour video.  On a tangent, I lasted two days on P90X, that is until I did AbRipperX, which caused me to believe that I had a hernia.

My mother started doing yoga in town during my last months up at school. I told my mother that I would come home and do yoga with her, but when I came home, I never really went. Either class was too early, or class was too expensive, I always found a way out of going (which meant just not getting up for class). I managed to dodge the class until my mother offered to pay for three classes for me, which I said yes to immediately due to my extreme ennui.

I was nervous to meet my mother’s instructor because yogis have a reputation of being a little bit insane. From what I had seen on television, yogis are as flexible as rubber, which of course is a sign of insanity. If your foot can stretch behind you and touch your nose, you must have made a pact with Satan, and therefore, you are trying to recruit me to become a Satanist.  But the instructor, Jamie, did not seem like she had made a pact with Satan, so I was put at ease.

Class started off slow, with a lot of downward dog. I am quite capable at downward dog. This of course was so that if I told anyone I can do yoga, I would quickly get into downward dog and then balance on one foot, which convinces most people that you have been doing yoga for the span of time. From downward dog, we did plank, which was also easy enough for me to do. I mean, who can’t just hold themselves stiff as a board? After the first five minutes of going from one pose to the next, I was already tired, and my palms had begun to sweat enough to make my hands slip on the mat.

Downward dog continued every other pose for the next twenty minutes, which would have been ok if I didn’t feel like I needed to pass gas worse than I have ever done before in my life. Each time I would go into downward dog, I would clench my butt cheeks together as hard as I could to keep myself from farting. If we were in a larger studio, I couldn’t care less if I farted, because I could probably lay the blame on someone else. But this studio only had room for one row of yogis, and the square footage of the studio would not allow for proper diffusion of any type of gas, let alone the worst fart I have ever conjured up in my life.

The gas subsided and we started doing strength and balance poses, which I actually did well at. First we did handstands, which I have tried my entire life to be able to do. We start against a wall and kick up to get into a handstand, resting against the wall. I was able to do this after two kicks, but kicked up with such force that I might have possibly kicked a hole in the wall. After a few tries with the wall, I managed to get a full handstand for about five seconds, which then made me whisper, “MA! LOOOOOK! I’M DOOOING IT.” Unfortunately, I lose my ability to whisper when doing yoga and the yoga instructor heard me. Now that I think of it, I never really had the ability to whisper, but my lack of ability worsens when I do yoga.

We balanced on our heads, on our hands, on our knees, on our feet, and I was able to maintain composure through the majority of the class. The worst of it came during the cool down, where we had to enter into happy baby. Happy baby has you on your back, with your feet up in the air, and your hands clasped around your feet. I thought that I was doing the pose beautifully, but it turns out I must have been doing it distractingly wrong. The instructor came over and pushed my knees closer to my chest and then pulled my legs apart. Using every muscle I could muster to keep my pose, my eyes began to cross and my face became crunched up and mangled. “Jacob, find some joy in the pose.” I forced a smile on my face, and took a breath, which made it seem like I was at least trying to find joy in the pose, but really, I found the devil. The class ended with a massage with some aromatic lotion, which made my hour and half suffering worthwhile, and the rest of the class, we laid on the ground with a buckwheat pillow over our eyes.

The next class was early in the morning the day after, which after waking up and not being able to move, seemed rather daunting, but I went anyway because as painful as it was, it was still a work out and I have put on some weight since coming home. When we stepped into the studio, the first thing the instructor asked was if I was sore. I knew that she was asking so that she would focus more on those areas that I was sore. So I smiled and said, “No. Not one bit.”

We went back through our sun salutations and then went into some hip opening exercises. Now, I have done ok in life with closed hips, and they seem to want to stay that way. I couldn’t even do the easiest of poses, and I found my mind wandering. The worst of my distraction came from a poster on one of the walls that went through ever pose imaginable, and I was entranced with the man in the poster. I was relieved that he was wearing dark spandex, because if he was not, I am positive he would have had crotch sweat, which is the worst of all sweats.

One pose I was doing obviously wasn’t on par as to what the instructor thought I could accomplish, so she decided to come and push me into the pose. As she nearly snapped my back from bending me backwards, I started to feel like I was going to lose balance and crush the yogi under the bulk of my being. But when I started to fall she just pushed back, and then pulled my arm out of its socket to accomplish the pose, which I pray was perfect or else my pain was in vain.

During the poses that the entire class seems to accomplish with great ease, the instructor loves to give out a, “Yogi’s Option.” This usually entitles contorting into a crazy position, while using your big toe to lift your leg over your head. If it was really this yogi’s option, I would option to go next door to the fish fry and eat fried seafood and tartar sauce until I can no longer move. It’s probably a better choice to follow the instructor’s option instead of my own.

The class is actually really great, but yoga is turning out to not be the form of exercise that really entertains me. This is probably because I prefer loud, Latin pop music to songs of the forest blue jays, or maybe because I like constant dancing motion, but all in all, it is a good class. I think also that the yoga mindset just doesn’t sit well with me. This is because the moment you say that, “this removes toxins,” I give you as much credibility as a Kinoki footpad.

Death by Soreness. AKA Banana-rama Biking, and Lactic Acid.

The summer of activities has started, and somewhere along the way I have become more sore than I have been in my entire life. It all started when my brother threw me a coming home party; most of the people that showed up, I have never seen in my entire life, and they had thought that I was actually coming home from a mission, but that’s neither here nor there. The party was a mustache bash, and to come in, a mustache had to be present on your face. Many party goers thought my brother was joking, until they got to our house and he turned them away until they were properly mustached. 

After a while, my brother broke out the big surprise of the party: an Xbox Kinect. We projected the games across the back of the house and had everyone watch while we made idiots of ourselves. My brother challenged me to a duel of Olympic Games, which started my week of soreness. Apparently, if you raise your knees rather high, while running, you run faster on the game. I was nearly leaping in the air to go as fast as humanly possible, pummeling my feet into the cement deck. I should have been wearing underwear as well… but I had no time to change from my swim trunks when a challenge was presented. Cameron won as usual, but I still beat him in a few events.

Sunday night was restless. And after trying to go to bed at midnight, my brother knocked on the connecting bathroom door to get me for a midnight-no-longer-Sabbath-let’s-get-In-n-Out snack. This, of course, was organized by Cameron’s sugardaddy (Joe), so I got a free bunch of fries out of the trip. But going to the midnight-no-longer-Sabbath-let’s-get-In-n-Out snack, and having Joe pay for my food, meant that I owed him. This would be paid back by a Monday morning game day.

I rolled out of bed on about six hours of sleep and zombied my way to a park, with my brother, to meet up with Joe and a few other friends from the ward, where we stood in the 100 degree heat at nine in the morning. Here, I was introduced to the most bizarre combination of baseball, football, polo, and plastic that I have ever come across in my life. The game is called foobasolf, and due to how dumb the game is, I refuse to actually describe the rules on my blog, and while it was a good laugh for a while, I don’t necessarily plan on keeping the foobasolf tradition alive after I move away from home. The second game was more enjoyable, and was a combination of ultimate Frisbee, lacrosse, and beach toys. Unfortunately for the other team, I used my entire body to block any type of passing between teammates, utilizing my crotch to make players so uncomfortable that they were not able to make any type of decent throw.

Tuesday was the day of an impromptu bike ride that my Mother planned with a few friends in the ward. She told on me on Sunday, asking, “Are you coming?” Not knowing what I was coming to, I said yes, just in case she was taking a group to a massage parlor. Then I was told that we would be going on a bike ride for 22 miles. I haven’t ridden a bike in over five years, and tried to get out by saying, “Oh darn, I don’t have a bike.” But my mother was prepared, and had already managed to get a hold of a fleet of bicycles for the tour de Hemet.

Tuesday, I rolled out of bed again, but this time at six, to get prepared for the activity. I managed to pull some clothes on, which was a miracle because of how sore I was from diving at wiffle balls during the previous day’s activities. After going about town to collect all the bikes we could, we met up at the trail.

I tried a few bikes, but nothing seemed to work for my lanky body. I was left with a choice: an obnoxiously colored bike that had issues with its gears, and a decent bike with a skinny, little banana seat. In a rushed decision, I chose the banana seat, and took off on the trail.

The first few miles wasn’t horrible, but when the trail turned to rocky horribleness, the banana seat started to rise higher and higher into what should be my butt crack, but due to my lack of butt, it is just a random crack. With each rock, the seat was nailed up and up until it wouldn’t go no more. My thighs burned, I was loamed in sweat, and somehow I managed to pedal my way to the end, and laid down into the back of my truck. Rigor mortis set in, and I was not able to get up. I just laid in the back of my truck, waiting to be roasted alive by the California sun.

Somehow, I was able to get myself back to my truck, waddling of course, and drive the bikes back to their proper owners, and then I promptly fell asleep on our leather couches. I only awoke to nature’s call, which had me cowboy strutting down the hallway as fast as I could, but when I finally took my seat, I realized that getting off of the pot might prove to be problematic. I sat there and realized that I could die there, just like Elvis did, or I could force myself off of the toilet, and make something of my life. Getting off of the toilet was the most difficult thing I have ever done in my life, but I refused to be found like Elvis, dead and bloated on the toilet.

I had difficulty walking after the mustache bash, but then somehow pushed myself to play games in the park, where running, diving, twisting, and movement were encouraged. I thought I was sore then, but now that I made a 22 miler, I think that it will be impossible for me to move in morning, and I might die from sheer exhaustion. But if I die tonight, I will be buried a biking, diving, running, throwing winner, which is more than I ever thought I would be.