Yogi Say What?

I've always wanted to get into yoga. It always looks so relaxing, and, well, slow...and mostly on the ground. My kind of non-overly exertive exercise. Plus, as an added bonus, my neurologist and all the MS literature says it's very good for people like me.

So I took off one recent Sunday for an hour-long yoga class at the gym. I thought about bringing my yoga mat that Mark had gotten as a film promo when he worked at the theater, but decided against it because it had a big picture of Mike Myers on it from his movie The Love Guru. Probably not the first impression I want to make with my fellow yoga-ites? Yogians? Whatever.

Now you may all remember the debacle the last time I tried to attend this yoga class. You remember, the teacher was sick, someone else came to teach and tortured us for an hour with very non-yoga moves. Yeah, I'm still working through that experience.

Anywho, I arrived at class, grabbed a mat and sat down. One by one the rest of the class began trickling in. They glared at me before laying out their own personal yoga mats. They began bending in unnatural stretching poses. Still they glared. Maybe it was because I left my socks on, I thought. So I took them off. More glaring. Then I noticed they all had some sort of foamy brick thing that I forgot to grab on my way into class. Maybe that was it. Suddenly I had flashbacks to the only other time I had attempted to integrate an obviously established class. I was almost drowned by old women.

But I was here for yoga. To relax, to stretch out my sore muscles. So I took my place. The instructor came over to my mat.

"You're new here, aren't you?"

"Yes," I said quietly, hearing in my head the old westerns where the townsfolk greet a stranger with "You're new around these parts, aren't ya?"

"OK, just try to follow along and let me know if you have any questions."

Thanks for the info, teacher, but I got this, I thought. And then we started.

Namaste, she said. Oh, I know that. I've heard that before. It's something like "Hi" or "Welcome, I'm glad you're here" or something along those lines.

And then it all fell apart. Suddenly my fellow Yoginis started moving each time the teacher called out the pose. The only problem was, she was speaking Yoganese or something. Words like Bhujangasana, Chaturanga, and Anjaneyasana started coming from the instructors mouth. I had no clue what she was saying, but the other class members apparently all spoke Yoganese like her and followed right along.

I tried to keep up and cheat off my neighbor, all the while trying to maintain my balance. It was not a pretty sight. I lost count of how many times the instructor approached my mat to tell me how I was doing it wrong. I resisted the urge to say, "Speak English and maybe I could do it!"

Finally, after an hour, my humiliation was over. I collected my shoes, water bottle and purse and headed for the door. On my way to escape, the teacher approached me, thanked me for coming and bid me adieu with a namaste. Back at ya, I said, and headed out the door.