Yogi Bear(ly)

I hate yoga. I figure I should get that one out on the table at the very beginning.  I really really want to love yoga, but that shit just ain't in the cards for me.  Sometimes I get all politically correct and tell people that I dislike yoga because of its basis in colonialist Western appropriation, or I cache in on the elitist "religious studies" bit and tell people that I just can't take it seriously after learning about what real yoga entails.

But the reality is that I hate it because I suck at yoga.

I used to be a member of a big gym and, at one point in time, got into going to their yoga classes. I would stake out my spot on the floor and unfurl my yoga mat while the classroom filled up with women of all ages.  When the lights were dimmed and Enya's version of Indian music began to play, I would fall into the zone of posing and stretching.

Then, inevitably, my eyes would stray to the women on either side of me.  To my left would be the classic sorority girl, clad in only spandex shorts and a sports bra, twisted upside down in a slightly suggestive backbend or leisurely touching her immaculately manicured toes in a full split.  She was always perfectly glamorous, without looking "try hard", with just enough abs to give her that flat stomach body envied by all bikini-wearers. To my right would be a woman pushing 80.  This average looking grandma, wearing sweatpants perhaps woven from sustainable bamboo, would be casually meditating, in full zen mode, with her feet behind her head like a human pretzel.

These two Yogi Archetypes would effortlessly waft from pose to pose, all while I panted and strained to maintain downward dog for more than thirty seconds (my shoulders no likey).  Switch to the warrior poses and I'm tipping over and landing on my butt.  Can we just cut to the chase and go straight to corpse pose? An hour of corpse pose. That would be my type of yoga class.

I know I shouldn't compare myself to others in the class, especially those who may have been doing yoga (or "their practice" as it is apparently called) for much longer than I have, but I'm only human.  Even when I attempt to do yoga alone, I get frustrated by my lack of flexibility and balance.  No matter what I do, I just can't make yoga enjoyable for myself.

That all being said, I fully acknowledge that yoga can have health benefits.  Ignoring the spiritual claims, as I'm still skeptical of those, the stretching and steady breathing of yoga has been shown to be good for numerous different ailments.  My gastroenterologist even recommended I try yoga to help relieve my IBS symptoms.  So I have been attempting to do yoga every morning in lieu of normal stretching for my health issues, and to help me wake up and get moving.  I put together a little ten minute routine gleaned from the classes I used to go to, and I try to do it as soon as I roll out of bed in the AM.  I'll put the emphasis here on attempting. Some mornings I just don't have the extra time to do yoga, or I would much rather hit the snooze button one more time, so I'm trying not to be too hard on myself if I miss a morning or two.

Namaste and shit.