Skip to main content

"Bikram" is slang for "Dear God make it stop"


So this actually happened back in March of 2012, but it recently popped up on Facebook and I got some super fun and positive feedback on it. My friend is insistent I share it with the [tiny*] masses, so I've tweaked it a bit and uploaded it here for your viewing pleasure (or disdain, if you're into that). Enjoy! :) 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I hate a lot of things in the world… Things like tomatoes, terrorists, and the neverending Northern VA traffic. My newest nemesis in life? Bikram yoga. It’s not even that I just hate bikram yoga: my one night experiencing it was painful. I’m a firm believer that I should try something before I pass judgment. This is my saga.

I’ll start at the beginning. First I had to swing by my local watering hole (the closest Sunoco) and buy 2 liters of water and get cash (the yoga place isn't into plastic and they advocate hydration). I walked in with my head down hoping to avoid the gaze of anyone so they wouldn’t judge my make-up free face, grabbed my waters, and hopped in line behind this perfectly toned girl in leggings and a tunic top. The cashier rung up her items, handed her the change, and stared at her posterior as she sauntered away. I walked up and he wouldn’t make eye contact with me. Inside I was screaming “Hey! I’m prettier than my thumb-holed hoodie and saggy gym shorts suggest!!” but outside I was all “Thanks! Have a good one!”, grabbed my bottles and ran for my car.

So the studio. It’s small. It’s roughly the size of my townhouse from front to back but without walls. It looked like it should comfortably fit ~30 people. There were 50-60. It was also 105 degrees Fahrenheit, with 40% humidity. These are facts here, I’m not just making this crap up- that’s straight off the website. I sat down on my yoga mat with my not-quite-shaven legs and prayed that the heat wouldn’t start a brush fire on my own personal trees. People around me laid on their mats, stretched into positions I’ve never seen before, or sat doing as I did, staring with a hint of fear behind their eyes.

The instructor was this spry man who apparently loved his shorty short spandex shorts. Did he demonstrate the moves? Nope. He walked around, barking out things like “left leg tight right leg relaxed chin out hands together thumbs crossed.” In fact, just for funsies, during the “dead body” pose, he started singing “Country Road.” I kid you not. I snickered when he first started because I thought he was just joking. But no, oh no, he kept it going. As he warbled “mountain mama”, I laid there wishing that the “dead body” wasn’t just a pose but a state of being for me. I laid there for what seemed like eternity with sweat coming out of pores I didn’t know I had.

Did you know that the fronts of your calves could sweat? And that it was possible even when you were stationary? Yeah, me neither. But they did. The guy in front of me to my right contorted himself as rivers of salty exertion careened down his gym shorts. The guy next to him almost fell as his foot slid from the pools of “yogis” around him. I think my eyes were even sweating. My ultimate goal of the night was to stay in the room, and believe me, even that was a challenge. I laid down on the mat at one point, hoping the heat wouldn’t be as bad (given that heat supposedly rises… Or so “they” say!), and down there were smells I’m not used to nor do I want to become accustomed to. I turned to my friend who had suggested we do this and mouthed the words "I hate you and we're not friends anymore."

The air in the studio reeked of persistence and soup. The breathing techniques demonstrated sounded like something from of the exorcist. In fact, after “natural” sit-ups, I legitimately thought people had indeed died in their “dead body” pose since they exhaled greatly and propelled their bodies up with an exhalation of air that suggested resurrection. It was eerie and sounded marginally demonic.

So, for the sake of my soul, I can never go to bikram yoga again.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So that's it! Anyone else ever had a terrifying experience with some kind of class? :) 

<3
A Redhead

*Note: Not to say that the mass of followers is literally tiny; you are fierce and wonderful! I just mean the number of you is tiny. Like 5. Solidarity, fat kids! =P

Comments

  1. Same exact class except my sister didn't tell me what kind of yoga it was until we walked in. The teacher actually called me out for looking at the clock and I had a man who looked exactly like David Hasslehoff in front of me.....wearing a speedo....doing downward dog.....worst. day. ever!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Shame Eating

I found the above image on the interwebs and it always makes me laugh. All.the.time. It's kinda true though, right? IF you've ever had any kind of food addiction then you know the sweet sweet embrace of "one more" handful of kettle corn (ahem), or "one more" piece of bread, or whatever . I was joking with my co-worker that I might as well be shame eating out of the Costco-sized bag of Kettle corn on my counter in the dark, licking the sweet and salty remnants off my fingers. That I can't be trusted alone with it. That I grab a bigger-than-small bowl and PILE it up, lamenting the few rogue pieces that make it to the floor. Another colleague overheard us and said she used to do that with angel food cake. She would sit it on the passenger side and just drive, picking at the fluffy confection. I know a girl who could knock out an entire family size container of Sara Lee pound cake. So friends, those are a few confessions. Using the powers of anonym

He Likes Big Butts and He Cannot Lie!

Do I have any fellow big booty girls in the audience? Or I suppose big booty brothers? Maybe? Anywho. I've had a rather prodigious posterior for my entire life. I think part of it is that I've always been a fat kid, and part of it is probably genetics. Even when I lost weight in high school, it was still pretty hefty. In fact, I recall walking with a friend of mine and hearing 2 guys behind us talking. "Look at that fat a**", his friend said "where" and the other guy said "the one on the right". I was, of course, the girl on the right. It's a moment that's resonated within me for a long time. That happened in probably 2003 while I was a young 16 year old, and 10 years later it's still a moment that occasionally wraps me up in it's insecure and hateful arms. It didn't help that a year or so later I was in a parking lot with friends, feeling cute in a spaghetti string tank top and jeans, and a complete stranger  drove by

Bittersweet

This post was initially written on March 29, 2021.  Going through infertility of any kind is so unbearably hard. I can't speak to everyone's experience, but as a couple who's had "unexplained infertility", it feels like perpetual waves of grief.  It feels like hopelessness. It feels like everyone's getting what you so desperately want while you sit there with empty arms. It feels like constant heartbreak seeing joyful posts of new pregnancies. It feels like isolation because you turn down invitations to showers and parties, for fear you won't be able to not  cry.  It feels like you're being punished because biologically nothing is wrong but you still don't have a baby. This has been our reality for the last 3 years and 7 months. Being open about our journey has been so rewarding but now it's taken the hard turn. I have to tell the sweet women I've been commiserating with that my turn is here. I'm pregnant.  Of course I know exactly what