Every yoga class begins with questions. What do you want to focus on today? What injured body parts should you avoid putting pressure on today? What happened at work today that you want to leave at the door? Why aren’t there cute guys in here and so where am I supposed to meet one? Who smells like shit?
These questions are to be kept in mind during the performance. The performance of strength, of exercise through community, the performance of routine. What is flow if not routine. What is performance if not repeated practice.
I arrived at the yoga class ten minutes late. I put the wrong address in my phone, followed it like the north star, and arrived a 13 minute walk away from where I was supposed to be. Luckily Becca arrived on time and saved me a spot next to her, by the door, for a minimally disruptive late entry. I slipped through the front door, panting and sweaty from my walk/run down Onderdonk, and stepped onto my mat with cactus arms.
I jumped in and began following instructions. I can only go off of audio cues, because I can’t see in yoga class (I don’t have contacts and my glasses fall off when I go upside down.)
Every yoga class I’ve ever been to has had some moment where the instructor politely gives you an out. “Feel free to meet us in child’s pose if this position isn’t available to you.” “Reach up to the sky, keeping your gaze forward. This will help with your balance. If looking back is available to you, do that, I’m not your mother.”
The reason workout classes work better than following a YouTube video at home is because at home, I will drop out of my side plank for anything. But in the class there’s an audience, and all the world’s a stage. In the class, I’ll hold my side plank until I’m physically carried out of it. I cannot be the first to fall. I need to be the strongest girl in the room. If the girl in front of me is up, I’m up. I’d follow girl-in-front-of-me off a bridge. “When your muscles start to quiver that means it’s working.” This is what a washing machine does when it’s about to short-circuit.
I made it through the yoga class alive and unplugged (because I couldn't see a damn thing.) I’m not even sure it happened. But my favorite part of a yoga class is at the end, for the final performance of the night. The cleaning of the mats.
This is the largest charade known to man. We all get up and put our blocks on the block shelf and the blankets in the blanket basket, and then we do the dance. We grab a microfiber towel, a spray bottle filled with water and one drop of lavender essential oil, and a dream.
These are not ingredients for cleaning. As I spray the mat with what can only be described as a LaCroix, I laugh. No part of this is antibacterial. I had sweat coming out of my head shoulders knees AND toes and it landed on this mat and the best we are doing as a community is simply rubbing it around. It reminds me of one of the great theater institutions of our time, the TSA. There to provide you with the illusion of security, with no security at all. Unless you have baby formula. God forbid you have baby formula.
I didn’t calculate that I’d have a brisk run before class and by the end of it, I was very hungry. I love yoga, but I hate Savasana. I don’t want to lie there and think about everything. I wonder if the inventors of yoga could have predicted that one day a girl would be lying in corpse pose, wondering if she could legally take a real estate agent to court over a broker’s fee. The teacher told us to relax, completely. To let our “muscles fall off our bones.” Great, now I’m craving BBQ.
I’m so hungry and so blind when I stand up that I can barely make my way to the orange gatorade water jug. I can picture the team pouring it over my back, congratulating me on the big win. Because it was a win, after all, that I made it to the yoga class. It was a win that I showed up exactly 10 minutes late, but not 11. I think at 11 minutes the door deadbolts and they have snipers on the roof.
I arrived too late to hear the questions at the start of the class. I was busy jaywalking and trying not to trip over sidewalk cracks in my Tevas. Maybe they asked what brought us in today. Maybe they asked us to say “hi" to a neighbor. Maybe they asked everyone to go around and say their social security number. I’ll never know, but that’s ok. Arriving on time was not available to me.
Snipers at the very least. Your cleaning observations are spot on. Fuck an unlabeled spray bottle.
Very funny. Best column yet.