Day 20 Consider Yourself Warned
I’ve reached that stage in an exercise program where my body has reached a plateau, neither improving (as far as I can tell) nor leaving me in a limp puddle of humiliation after a class.
Now, they tell me, it becomes a mental challenge.
NOW it becomes mentally challenging?? I don’t know what that means, exactly. From day one, it’s been a mental challenge to stay in posture when my hamstrings are screaming. It’s a mental challenge just to get to class every day. It’s a social situation, which automatically makes it mental challenging for me. And NOW it’s getting started??
I’m scared.
But I have noticed one thing, and maybe this is what they’re talking about. I’m pretty damn proud of myself. Yessiree, bob, I’ve made it 20 days in a row. Yup, lotta sweat. Lotta laundry.
And I’m not afraid to talk about it. To wear yoga clothes all day, every day, to be make-up free and proud, to casually practice postures while waiting in bank line-ups. (All part of the social challenge referenced above.)
“You run marathons,” I might comment at a cocktail party. “How nice for you. I,” pause for effect, “do yoga. Bikram yoga. The hot kind. Here, feel my abs. FEEL THEM!”
If I’ve had a glass of wine, it can quickly devolve into an anatomy lesson, a sort of reverse sexual assault. Which you’d think would make me popular at parties, but no. Apparently I do something weird with my eyes that frightens people.
Mental challenge, pshaw. It’s a mental challenge every day, just to be me. Bring it on, I say. BRING IT ON!
Day 18 Never Too Late
“Never too sick, never too old, never too broken … to begin again.”
That’s the slogan at my yoga studio. Labouring, as I am, through the murk of a full-blown mid-life crisis, I find it particularly encouraging. Yes, yes, I know what you’re thinking. I look so stable. Normal, even. Well, beneath my mild-mannered exterior pulses the hot, red knowledge of mortality, the running-out of the sand in my hourglass. Like Superman, but with neuroses instead of power.
I look after myself. I’m responsible, vigilant even, some might suggest hypochondriacal, about my health. (I want “I TOLD you I was sick!” carved on my headstone.) I don’t obsess, really, but I pay attention. Just because I didn’t have (fill in the blank) last year, when I complained about that weird pain in my (fill in the blank) doesn’t mean I don’t have it now.
I’m not sick, but some days, I feel old and broken in ways that there simply isn’t time to fix. My life is changing, once more, and I’ve never been particularly good with change. But that’s what life is. Like it or not, it’s all about change.
So I push myself out of my comfort zone, day after day, trying to get my head to my knee, forcing myself to face my aging body, my changing life. It’s hard. Sometimes it hurts.
As Westley said to Buttercup in The Princess Bride, “Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” (Westley was sad when he said that, suffering as he was under the burden of unrequited love, and I’m quite sure he’d adopted a more optimistic outlook by the movie’s end.) Unrequited love or midlife crisis, it’s all temporary. It’ll all change soon.
It’s a good body. It’s a good life. It’s up to me to enjoy them while I can.
Namaste.
Day 14 Sweaty Naked Boys
So a few weeks ago, three young guys tried out a yoga class. You could tell they thought it was a joke; they swaggered into the studio like hockey players, all ripped and cocky, naked but for their under-armours, all “look at me” and “yeah, baby, enjoy the show.” Those of us with a few classes under our belts just smiled in anticipation.
For the record, black under-armours aren’t a completely bad idea. Black just gets blacker when it’s wet. Someone should have warned the guy in white, however.
I adjusted my position so I had a clear view in the mirror. There was gonna be a show, alright.
Within minutes, the pretty naked-boys weren’t smiling quite so hard. They realized that all these middle-aged people were actually fit, and knew how to do stuff that, gosh, was harder than it looked. And geez, it was HOT.
Before long, they weren’t smiling at all. In fact, they looked nauseated and wobbly. White under-armour guy suddenly realized that he was, for all intents and purposes, naked, and didn’t appear too thrilled about it.
By the end of the class, they were all collapsed on their towels, limp and gasping. When it went from interesting to slightly worrisome, to embarrassing, I stopped watching. I didn’t want to bear witness to any stains appearing on those tighty-whities.
The naked-boys haven’t been back. They’re welcome, though. As soon as they’re ready for a real work-out with real hotties.