Bul­letin Board

Every Mon­day and Thurs­day, you can find me try­ing to stretch my down­ward fac­ing dog and des­per­ately attempt­ing to breathe dur­ing sun salu­ta­tions. So far, I mas­ter the corpse pose, which is basi­cally lying flat on your back on a mat.

I reg­is­tered myself for a yoga class in a des­per­ate attempt to beat the win­ter blues. On Mon­days, I have 75 min­utes of Hatha Yoga, on Thurs­days, I attend a 90 min­utes Power Yoga class. Note that I had no idea what I reg­is­tered for since I picked the two classes that could fit in my schedule.

On my first class, I showed up in my work clothes and changed in the bath­room. I was wear­ing some old Roots cropped pants and the only loose-fitting shirt I could find: the U2 Ver­tigo tour one. Yes, the one that has three sym­bols on the front: a peace sign, a heart and a bomb. All the other women in the class had really nice Lul­ule­mon pants and tight t-shirts, sev­eral of them even sport­ing small “peace and love” or “aum” tat­toos on their lower backs or legs. Note to self: next time, do not wear a t-shirt with the sym­bol of a bomb on it, even if it meant to be ironic.

We set up the mats in silence and I sat there, wait­ing for the instruc­tor to show up.

The first thing I learned is that in yoga, appar­ently, you can’t just “sit there”. You have to be “present on your mat” (checked), “relaxed’ (checked), “breath­ing deeply” (checked)… and in pad­masana posi­tion. Huh? The lotus pose, the one in which you sit crossed-legs with the feet rest­ing on your hip. Yeah, right.

In yoga, sit­ting is painful.

For­tu­nately, after a few min­utes of heavy breath­ing and try­ing to not cramp, the teacher announced that we would now assume a relax­ation pose: Adho Mukha Svanasana. I nod­ded with a know­ing look but the truth was, I spent 12 years learn­ing Man­darin. Not San­skrit. Now this is actu­ally the famous “down­ward fac­ing dog” (famous because half of the yoga cen­ters in the world seem to be named “down­ward dog yoga cen­ter”). In this pose, you basi­cally form a “v” shape rest­ing on your hands and your feet.

In yoga, relax­ation poses are painful too.

Yet, I didn’t feel too bad about my absolutely non-flexible body because I noticed a few Lululemon-tight-clothes-wearers strug­gling as well. This was an all-levels class and I had expected to find some posi­tions… sorry, asanas, dif­fi­cult. How­ever, my self-esteem would have been even stronger if I hadn’t set up my mat by a young woman who seemed straight out of the Cirque du Soleil. I watched her in the cor­ner of my eyes as she bent effort­lessly to reach her toes and formed a per­fect down­ward dog she held for a full five min­utes. She then sat on her knees with the thighs per­pen­dic­u­lar to the floor, dropped her head back, and some­how slowly low­ered her crown to the ground. Ouch. Deep back­bend. Appar­ently, that was her warn-up routine.

Mean­while, I was strug­gling to keep my right arm in from of me and my left arm behind in war­rior II posi­tion. Who knew that keep­ing arm straight up for two min­utes was difficult?

But I’m glad to report that I have improved these last two months. I love my yoga stu­dio because the classes are small and most of them are drop in. Yoga is relax­ing and I do feel good after my classes. I dis­cov­ered a few mus­cles I didn’t know I had and I do feel more flex­i­ble. Yet, I don’t buy this whole “yoga rules my life” attitude.

For exam­ple, last week, I decided to try the biggest yoga stu­dio in Ottawa (you’d be sur­prised to see how pop­u­lar yoga is in Ottawa!). So I traded my 6pm Power Yoga for a 3:30 Bikram Yoga class at the trendy place. Worse. Deci­sion. Ever.

The stu­dio, for a start, was a car­i­ca­ture of yoga stu­dio. A small shop sold incense and prayer books down­stairs. Peo­ple (all white sub­ur­ban, 100% non-Indians), greeted me with a quiet “namaste”. The change room smelled of tea oil. Yuck.

I entered the “hot room” to find about thirty peo­ple stretch­ing on their mats. The women were wear­ing even tighter clothes and most of the men were shirt­less, dis­play­ing their mus­cles (or lack of in most case — yes, I did look). And every­body was already sweat­ing profusely.

Bikram yoga is done in a very hot room (40.5°C) with 50% humid­ity. There, we will do a series of 26 poses, repeated twice, as well as two breath­ing exer­cises. I real­ized very quickly that even though the posi­tions weren’t that chal­leng­ing, my yoga mates were: star­ing at one­self in the mir­ror seemed to be a very ppop­u­lar yoga pose here. Worse for me, the oppres­sive heat and unbear­able humid­ity made me feel I was try­ing to stretch in hell. Grab­bing your feet, your toes or your other hand when you’re drip­ping sweat is dif­fi­cult enough. Hav­ing an instruc­tor yells “streeetch! moooore! breeeeathe! deeeper!” adds to the stress. By the time we were allowed to pause to drink water, my heart was beat­ing fast, my head was pound­ing and I felt nau­seous. I glanced at the clock. Only half-way. Forty five min­utes left.

After the sec­ond half of the class, I only kind of attempted the poses. Doing yoga in an hell­ish sauna room was not for me. And when I saw some­one leav­ing fif­teen min­utes before the end of the class, I sighted with relief. I needed fresh air. Another girl at the far end of the class gath­ered her stuffs and I did the same, only to be stopped by the instruc­tor her­self. I swear I did not know that leav­ing before the class is fin­ished was steal­ing everybody’s energy. But I did not care. Self­ish me. I just wanted to breathe fresh air. I nod­ded with­out a word and stepped out of the class. The girl who left at the same time and I looked at each other: “too fuck­ing hot…”.

I “namaste-byed” the receptionist/ shop owner and left quickly. No more Bikram bull­shit for me. If I want to be hot, I’ll take a hot bath.

I still love yoga and I came back to my small non-new age stu­dio. I just don’t like yoga as a cult, that’s all. This atti­tude dri­ves me nuts. Not all of us are body-obsessed or wish to go med­i­tate in an ashram after all…

How about you? Tried yoga before?

Related arti­cles:

1. The Fit­ness Quest
2. Pic­ture of the Week: The Contortionist
3. No Dark Sar­casm In The Classroom
4. We May Be Stu­pid But We Are Good At It
5. The Rideau Bus Stop