Hot Yoga

I was raised in the South, but I was politely asked to leave when it was discovered that I am physiologically incapable of glowing, and therefore cannot be a lady.  Sadly, I sweat, and therefore fall into the category of horse.  No self-respecting family could possibly allow their son to marry me.  Fortunately for me, this discovery coincided with me being introduced to the Pacific Northwest, where there is no such thing as a 100 degree summer with 100% humidity.  Oddly enough, I found this a good thing, and decided to make a permanent home here anyway.

But I do sweat.  When I was a traveling nurse, I went for an assignment in Savannah in the springtime.  I had my trusty Subaru wagon, which being a good PNW car, had no AC.  Why would you need anything but an open window?  I had just finished an assignment in Miami and done just fine, but GA is another story. My apartment was a 10 minute drive from the hospital where I worked swing shift.  I could take a shower, get dressed, drive to the hospital, and need an entire change of clothes by the time I got there. I spent my entire tax refund that year retrofitting the wagon with AC.

I have a dear friend, T, who does not sweat.  She was plucked from her native Brazil because her husband happens to be a brilliant computer guy and the PNW is a magnet for folks like that.  T misses the big yellow thing in the sky. She misses the heat.  She would like to sweat, I think, but fails to be inspired to do so here.  She is also quite the hardbody, and is always going spinning, or hiking, or taking tantric jujitsu.  So it should be no surprise that she loves hot yoga.  She raved and raved about it, and for some insane reason I decided to go along with her.

I am hypermobile.  It’s a plus-minus thing.  Being limber is great, but the ability to fall off your own ankles is overrated.  After a strange rock climbing incident where I somehow managed to disarticulate my own hip getting my shoe stuck in a crevice, my beloved hip doctor recommended against yoga.  “You’d be too good at it”, he said, in his grave Texan drawl.  But I wanted to try yoga; craved the stretching and toning.  I like individual sports:  things you can do at home, without much equipment. Everyone said Hot Yoga was easier on your joints.  So, I guess, in a way, it makes sense that I went.

I took a ginormous water bottle with me to the studio.  I don’t know much, but I know that if you are going to either get liquored up, or sweat, you need to hydrate.  Unfortunately, the yoga mistress saw this differently.  NO! No drinking unless I tell you!  So, there we are in a dry sauna (after swimming my max time in the sauna is 7 minutes),   contorting our bodies into curious knots, and shapes usually reserved for architecture. “ I’ll take Eiffel Tower for $500, Alec!”  The problem was, I was immediately so sweaty that I couldn’t stay on my mat.  Even with the towel. The poses weren’t nearly the problem that sliding off and colliding with the yogateer to my right was.  “Oops! So sorry!” “Whoops! My bad”.  “No, it’s okay, I’ll just move to the corner over here.”
 

Following the slip ‘n slide, of course, came the dehydration, and the gradual slide into unconsciousness.  We had been allowed one sip break.  I had sweated out about 2 liters.  You do the math.  When we started the class, the yoga mistress said the goal for newbies like myself was to manage to stay in the hot box, oh, sorry, studio, for the whole class.  It would be great, she said, if we could actually do a little yoga, but just not leaving was good.  I have to say, this seemed like the wrong bar to set.  Imagine if this were an academic class:  “We’d really like you to learn some Chinese, but we really just hope you won’t run screaming from the room”.

I probably should have left before it started.  But I didn’t.  I'm stubborn that way.  Instead, I found myself looking for a cool spot.  Aha!  There was a window!  I propped my sweaty body against the cool glass.  I had forgotten that glass was neutral, and I could warm it faster than it could cool me.  I snuck over to the next pane, only to find that I had soaked the lovely gauzy curtain, and it was now sticking to the glass in a me-shaped pattern, sweat wicking up the curtain.  I decided I had to stay put.  By now I was panting like a rabid dog.  The yoga mistress was gently chiding me:  “you really should try to breathe through your nose”.  If I could have spoken I would have gently responded to the effect that choosing from which orifice to breathe was only possible when all the functions of respiration are actually being fulfilled.

Approximately three weeks later, the hour was up, and T left her picture perfect pose to take a small sip of water, wipe three drops of sweat from her shoulders, and peel my quivering protoplasm off the window.  I made it to the bench outside the hot room, where I downed my entire water bottle, against all advice (you really should take small sips!) and finally made it out to my car.  For the rest of that day, and most of the next, my head throbbed like a bullfrog’s throat , and my face was beet red.  Notwithstanding the gallons of water I consumed, I firmly believed I was parched, and supplemented with Gatorade and beer.  I swore never to return to any form of hot yoga.  And I remain grateful that I wasn’t asked to replace the curtains.

Dry Gin Martini, MD,emphasis on the dry.