Super Bendy Trouble

yoga 

Oh, how I love yoga. For years, I resisted, thinking it was all hippy meditation and weirdness. Plus, I was a dancer before becoming an exercise instructor, so to me flopping around on the floor didn't seem to count as working out.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Yoga is by far the hardest workout I've ever done--even harder than classical ballet! I sweat like Michael Jackson at a Boy Scout Jamboree and every damn muscle (especially the ones I didn't know I had) throb and stretch. Which means when I leave yoga class I don't feel sore at all; I feel taller, fitter, and (bear with me on this one)like my whole body sighs a great heaving sigh of relief.

Having mentioned my previous athletic endeavors, you might think yoga would be a piece of cake. I wish! Where ballet and aerobics are kinetic, moving with purpose and speed to raise your heart rate and burn calories, Yoga requires being very still and focused.

Every class has people of all size/shape/ability, and the instructors give excruciatingly detailed how-tos with every pose, so you're much too busy trying not to collapse to be bored, or to worry about what anyone else is doing. The most advanced do the same poses as the novices, they're just able to go farther with the wraps (those scary elastic people who can fold themselves into human origami). How many times, while holding a difficult pose and wobbling and sweating, have I wished I'd gone to Jazzercise instead? About a million times, I'd say.

Those who know me well, know that I am a spaz. Seriously, a total spaz. How shocked would they be to see me all serene and peaceful, smiling contendedly as I say, "Namaste" to my instructor. Namaste=the peaceful love in me salutes the peaceful love in you, or something like that. Why, when I leave the club after yoga, you can't make me swear at the colossally stupid other drivers, when I usually have Tourette's about that. [example: {"Does that @$%!@!$$ car have a !%!$%!%! gas pedal, you %!%!%!#@?{"] Instead, I smile and toodle on home in my roller skate car, at peace with the world and all its idiots.

Anything that causes THAT effect has got to be powerfully good! Another item under Trouble Highly Recommends!