So we've left it until very last minute, but Angus and I have been going to the gym everyday this past week (it's a bathing suit alert-in exactly 7 days I'll be in the South Pacific, staring down the business end of lycra and hoping to God that lycra is code for "corset-like swimming costume". I would like to know that I can pull on that swimsuit and then suddenly have the figure of Eva Longoria, but I have a feeling it doesn't work that way.) I'm sitting here in two layers of clothes in front of a roaring fire at 930 in the morning as it's currently snowing outside, so believe me-the warm South Pacific appeals in a very big way.

One week and I'll be in the Cook Islands'¦one week and I'll be in the Cook Islands'¦one week and I'll be in the Cook Islands and I cannot fucking wait.

The gym has become a place of real refuge to me, albeit the typical scene of a treadmill battle (I have started to enter in the machine that I am age 32, as...well...it's a month away and I need to face reality that 31 is kissing my ass goodbye. That, and I have to be honest about how much I weigh, since my relationship with a treadmill needs to be symbiotic, not a complete lie about the weight like I usually do). I have become one of those yuppies who has to have certain elements to their exercise-when on the treadmill, I have to have interesting TV, and this leads to an even more frightening revelation-I cannot run without TV. I'm not interested in running around the cricket green, I don't want to tour the neighboring fields'¦I want to run and I want to watch The Simpsons while I do it. If I'm left with the news, an in-depth analysis of the economy, or, say, curling, then I want to get off the treadmill and lift heavy things, ostensibly at people that I don't like. When I run, I want to be constantly entertained so I can forget the sheer misery of the actual activity of running. I want to be entertained, and I want 32 inch LCD screens to entertain me.

I am a product of the Nike generation and I have no problem with that.

We've started up at the gym daily as it's nice to feel that we've been virtuous and worked off our daily caloric intake. I can't say as we've lost a lot of weight, but I am feeling better and fall asleep in an instant, sleeping-tablet free. It's nice to sleep, and even nicer sleeping with aching thigh muscles as I am aware that I am working the legs even more than usual. I work on my upper arms and back as I'm beginning to have serious paranoia about back fat-what happens if I get the dripping kind of back fat, the kind that looks like bat wings? Then what? My god, what a nightmare. Batman Back Fat. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, and naturally float back down to earth with the aid of far too much toast lodged under the skin of my rhomboids.

I have still been enjoying yoga three times a week-Hatha yoga twice a week and ashtanga yoga once a week. It doesn't make me look like Madonna and never will, but I am even amazing myself.

It's been nearly a year since I started yoga lessons and I can't believe the pretzel-like contortions that I can get myself into. I'm not full of myself here, the truth is there's precious little in life that I think I am actually any good at, but yoga is one of those things. It helps to have too-long pony-like legs, which up until yoga has meant I have had a lifetime of tripping over my own shadow. At last now I can do the things that many can't-I can sit in the lotus position and have my knees flat on the floor. I can the splits in both directions. I can wrap one leg around each other and stand in the Eagle. I can do twists, turns, and balance postures.

I love it so much that I can't believe I didn't get into yoga years ago.

Reena continues to be a pain in the neck. She drives me crazy in ashtanga yoga, where we have to practice something called ujjayi breathing, where you close your throat a bit and sound as though you've been enjoying about 10 packs a day since you were 4 years old. Most of us just sound like we have a healthy case of black lung, but Reena! Oh, Reena has to sound like a truck convoy making their way down the road. A Sleestack has nothing on her as she gasps and gutters her way through the class. She's injured one of her knees in her kung fu class (she does all the yoga classes, Hatha, ashtanga, and even takes qi gong and now kung fu classes. She told us she tried to do a spinning kick and wound up blowing her knee out, to which I think: Maybe you shouldn't have tried the spinning kick on day 3 of a new career in kung fu class irritation, yes? With each posture that we do, she makes it clear that she has to be careful of her knee.

Instructor: Now we'll try the reverse triangle'¦
Reena: That's really hard on my knee! I'm going to have to try it, though!

Instructor: Our next posture is the Warrior 2.
Reena: Oh my God, you want to torture me, don't you! That hurts terribly!

Instructor: I hope you've all been working on your handstands, as we have to practice the jump-throughs today.
Reena: Nope, my knee just won't do it. I'll sit here and breathe in ujjayi breathing, you know, where I sound like I'm channeling a bottle of shaving cream?

We got it, Reena. The knee is sore. Maybe we can get someone to kiss it and make it better, but until then just suck it up and keep going. Or better yet-if you have a bad knee and need laparascopic surgery, maybe being in a yoga class isn't a good idea, huh? Just a thought, I mean-I'm not a doctor, I just play one on TV, but since I myself have bad knees and can imagine the pain of making them contort into strange positions (I badly injured one of them in a bicycle accident when I was a kid, and then I had such a hostile growth spurt that my kneecaps couldn't keep up, so they are more or less separated from my legs as the tendons are in bad shape. It's pretty cool, I can move my kneecap around my leg and gross people out. That, and I can pop out my shoulder joints. Childhood humor of "What's grosser than gross?" has nothing on me.)

The instructor told me that I am the most advanced in the classes, and like a 9 year-old being awarded a gold star for best attendance it gave me a high that lasted for days. Again, I'm not good at much, but one year after starting being told I am the most advanced? Yeah. That felt great. And the truth is, I don't feel like quitting and I don't feel like it takes over my life-I wouldn't mind learning more about yoga and maybe someday I can get teacher's accreditation (so when that inevitable nervous breakdown finally strikes I can really close the loop on the whole "crunchy-granola-organic-fruit-loop" lifestyle I am very nearly leading already, and as I sit there a bit twitchy and tweaky before a classroom, I can take comfort in the fact that although my stomach lining went AWOL long ago at least I can put my feet behind my head.) That said, Reena is taking off of class for an entire month in the summer as she's going to do yoga teacher accreditation, which doesn't bode well for the rest of us-she already likes to tell us all what we're doing wrong and how to do it better, which is going to grind down on my very last fucking nerve pretty soon.

Each time I am able to do a new position, I feel great. I tell Angus about it but he's not really interested, so I re-live it in my head. There's something about being Gumby-like that makes me feel really good. Sometimes we practice what the instructor calls "Happy yoga", as she does a sequence of postures designed to make the hips more relaxed and more open. On these days she sings: "Happy hips are loose hips!", to which I always think: If only I had a nickel for every time I've heard that one'¦

On Sunday we spent a lot of time doing positions that we don't usually do, and one of them involved sitting down, spreading your legs as far apart as possible (nearly in the splits), and then bending down from the waist. In this posture I have never been able to get very far down. The point is to, legs spread as wide as possible, bend from the hips and get your chest and arms flat on the floor. I was halfway down when the instructor walked behind us, trying to urge our hips and backs to push us go further down. The women started going forward a few inches as she gently guided pressure on our lower backs. When she came up to me, she pressed on a spot of my lower back and WHAM! My chest hit my mat and my forehead hit the floor, my legs nearly in side-to-side splits. I did it. I was doing the posture.

The instructor chuckled. "Your bad back isn't strong enough to push you down, but you're flexible enough to do this."

I couldn't believe it. The rest of the class she would come down and adjust all of us, and each time with guidance from her I was able to do almost all of the postures completely. I couldn't believe it, I felt like gold.

I looked up once and saw Reena looking at me, her knee brace having migrated from her knee and bunched up around her upper thigh, her face a picture of annoyance.

It's all worth it baby.

Here's to karma.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 10:51 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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