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.

Moving Back Home and the Activities That Will Follow

I’m moving back to California in two weeks. While I am really excited to be back with my family and be rid of my present roommates, my brother has me scared to death with all the activities he has planned for when I come home. Cameron has always been an active child; he played football and ran track in high school, and I have somewhat always been the sedentary one. If Cameron thinks I will be able to keep up with his activity level, he is to be sore disappointed.

While I did play sports in high school, I don’t ever claim to be an athlete. To be honest, I really hated playing sports, but my siblings were convinced I would be the best football player. So for Christmas one year, I received cleats and a football; I was disappointed at the time because I would have much rather received a magic set or maybe a skewer to gouge my eyes out with. I played football, gawky and awkward, and never really meshed with the team, but after one season, I was no longer required by my family to play a next. This could be because I wasn’t the best player on the field, or maybe they sensed my deep hatred for all things confrontational and let me slide.

Come to think of it, I’ve never really been that big into sporty displays of masculinity: weightlifting, sports, wrestling. It is actually possible that I have only arm wrestled once in the last ten years. This of course was after a family reunion, wherein an uncle had a few beers and decided to challenge every strapping lad he could trap into a corner. I won. But I am twice his size and was sober at the time, so I don’t find winning against him to be any great sign of my strength.

My parents have also gone on an active streak, buying bikes and enrolling in yoga. I can’t even remember the last time I owned a bike, let alone rode one. My dad keeps telling me, “If you can Zumba, you can ride a bike.” I don’t see how me shaking my hips for an hour correlates to biking ability, but we will see when I get home if he is actually right.

 My mother enrolled in yoga, which is exercise I can actually do—stretching was where I excelled in football. But I fear I may embarrass my mother if I attend with her. It’s not that I have horrible form, or pass gas when in downward dog, but the slightest amount of exercise initiates a flood of sweat from my body. This usually goes unnoticed in manly sports, because you must either sweat or die, but there isn’t much excuse in yoga to be drenched in sweat from the first breath. I blame my hyperhydrosis on my recent obesity, but because people can’t imagine me as fat, they usually just think I am a freak of nature. I, myself, think it is a bit freaky that peeling an orange will make me sweat like cheese in a hot room.

Every couple of months, I convince myself that I will start working out and finally obtain the beach bod I have always aspired for. This usually lasts about a day, and ends with me eating an entire pizza on the couch while watching The Match Game. Last time I decided to attempt beach bod status, I started running at the BYU gym. With the first stride on the treadmill, my saliva had become as viscous as glue, and each following stride made me feel as if I was running toward my death at six miles an hour. The other issue I had with the treadmill is that my strides are so long that my feet would go past the conveyer path and send me on a loppy stumble that almost always ended with a sprained ankle.

To avoid more painful sprains, I would find myself on the ellipticals. My problem then stemmed from the fact that I was the only boy in the BYU gym who ever touched the ellipticals, let alone used them. Not only was I the only boy on the ellipticals, but the ellipticals were positioned to face the very manly free-weight floor. Due to the laws of feng shui, the judgemental glares from the manly, weightlifting men were focused, magnified even, directly on me, the pansy on the elliptical.  I promptly left the gym, trying to assert my manliness by hawkin’ a loogie on my way out; this backfired and left a ball of spit dangling from my lower lip.

I could spend the next two weeks becoming more manly and making sure that I am in peak physical condition before I go home so that I can keep up with Cam’s frolicking, but it is much more likely that I will spend my remaining days on the couch, eating deep fried foods and watching TV. It’s a good thing that my brother appreciates deep frying more than any physical activity on earth. So as long as I am armed with vegetable oil, and Cam’s deep fryer doesn’t explode, I may be off the hook.