The only problem with my goal of becoming a yoga instructor is that I’m not strong, bendy, focused, or coordinated. Also, I may or may not have flipped off one of my instructors when I was circling the lot in vain looking for a spot the other day. (Why are these studios always located in busy, urban areas where parking is a near impossibility and the pursuit of it is guaranteed to smash all your chi into tofu?)
All these doubts kicked into high gear at a Hatha class, recently, where I met the anti-chi in a strappy sport top. She was all zen and sweet and told us a lovely, seemingly irrelevant story about an ambitious king who worked his whole life to achieve yogic sage status, which I assume means absolute serenity and the ability to always find a parking spot.
She talked us through a whole bunch of nice poses I’d done before, she gave gentle adjustments, she smelled of essential oils…
She mentioned that king dude again. Visvamitrasa was his name-o. Seems he was quite strong, bendy, focused, all that shit. Then she’s like “okay, lift this, then grab that, then hold the other thing…” and next thing I know,
she tells us to do THIS:
- This woman’s pelvis is mocking you.
Named after Mr. Visvamitrasa, this, my dears, is the dance move that will NEVER EVER sweep the nation, unless we are planning to have a nation of para- and quadriplegics.
It’s a hip opener! It’s an arm strengthener! It slices! It dices! I looked around and saw the other jerkfaces in my class actually giving it a go. Sometimes, there just aren’t enough middle fingers.
Out of options and low on judgement, I crawled gracelessly into a partial split, pasted one hand on the floor, put my other hand over my head, then searched like a blind bat-catcher for my top foot, which was approximately 4.5 miles from where it needed to be to ever achieve yogic sage status. Verily, I smelled oily lilacs and perfection, and I knew I was fucked.
Strappytop Suzie then seriously grabbed my foot as though this pose was ever, ever going to be a part of my life, and attempted to HELP it into position.
“Oh,” I breathed, hoping she was the one I most definitely flipped off in the parking lot, “It’s really not going to do that.”
”Okay,” she said forgivingly, and I vowed that if I still had both arms and legs when this thing was over, I would beat her to death with all of them like a paraplegic octopus on meth.
Namaste.
But wait. Now Jim is saying I need to tell you the moral of the king story, which indicates that he doesn’t love me, understand me, or care at all about the kind of pain I would put myself through to put food on the table and support my strappy sport top addiction.
The moral is that bendy=smug and smelly.
And the moral is also that my chi bone is not connected to my pelvic bone.
And finally, if you ever find yourself in a class I’m instructing, you can rest assured that we’ll be sipping merrily on Yoga Lite, only bending until we either yawn or reach orgasm cuz it feels sooooo nice, and apologizing to nobody.
Namaste, bitches.
Caroline….I adore you. This is my entire issue with formal yoga classes, and why I much prefer to do naked yoga in my living room.