Yin Yoga

Last night, I got as close to torture as I ever want to get. Following my new routine, I went to the 90-minute yoga class. I've decided that I like the class because it seems to attract a core group of the same people every week. The instructor is more relaxed and there's sense of comaraderie. We needed it last night.

The instructor put her mat at what has been the back of the room, announcing that she didn't want us to look at the clock during class. I should have recognized this as an omen. The second sign that things were not going to follow a "normal" path was when she handed out blocks and straps. Then, when we'd all assembled, she announced that we were going to do yin yoga, "just for fun." I've learned that "just for fun" is this instructor's way of saying, "Only totally insane people would try this." For example, she encourages us to wind ourselves up into knots, then balance on our forearms, "just for fun." As she's balancing there, she'll say, "See, isn't this fun? It's hilarious." I usually stop whatever she's doing when she says, "Try this, just for fun."

Heading into an entire class that would be "just for fun" was a bit daunting. She introduced yin yoga by saying that we'd go into poses without warming up our muscles first, then we'd hold the poses longer than usual. I thought, "This sounds like a recipe for a torn muscle, but she's the instructor." We spent the next 75 minutes in some of the most uncomfortable positions I've ever been in. It wasn't excrutiating, just uncomfortable. Poses that I've come to enjoy were not pleasant. Let me tell you, once you've sustained a penguin pose without warming up first, it hurts to move back into child's pose.

I felt like I was 80 years old, but I knew I wasn't alone. There were groans all over the room as we slowly put our legs back together (and back in socket). At one point, the instructor admitted that the lunge pose was "killing her," but she didn't want to "gyp" us out of the experience. A woman in the center of the room said, "No, no, please gyp us." Next, we worked ourselves into a pose where we were on our backs with one leg bent so that foot touched the corresponding hip, bottom of the foot turned toward the ceiling. The lone fellow in the room (not last week's flasher) said, "If my quad should come loose from my body, what will you do?" Someone else assured him that we'd call 911.

At one point, the instructor sniffed the air and asked, "Does it smell like cleaning fluid?" No one responded, so she looked at the fellow and asked, "Do you smell, like, cleaning fluid?" Still holding his pose, he said without missing a beat, "Do I smell like cleaning fluid?" I thought I was going to topple over. It still cracks me up.

At one point, in some twisted pose, the fellow said, "I had planned to go running tomorrow. Now, I don't know if I'll be able to." One woman responded, "I drive a stick shift car. I just hope I can get home." I said, "I just hope I can walk out of this room." But, yet, none of us left. Laughing through the discomfort was somehow comforting.

For the big finale, we sat in a butterfly position, soles of the feet together, knees out to the side. We wrapped the strap around our hips, passed it under our feet, then buckled and tightened the strap. Then, as instructed, the lot of us positioned the blocks behind us and reclined so our backs rested on one block and our heads on the other. As I laid there, trussed up and totally exposed, I thought, "This is as close to torture as I want to get." I also thought, "Please God, let me sit back up."

I feel that I can speak for the entire class when I say that none of us are in a hurry to do yin yoga again. We were all good sports and there was more laughing and cutting up than in the other classes I've gone to. The instructor rewarded us with a longer relaxation period at the end. We did alternate nostril breathing, where you close one nostril, breathe in with the other, exhale, switch sides, repeat. Divine intervention was the only thing that kept me from laughing out loud.

I thought I'd be sore today, but I'm not. Just tired. Probably should have skipped the 45 minutes on the elliptical today.