the yogi that was not.

thank you dad for buying me the month of unlimited yoga classes, especially since i had mentioned that i felt that needed to get back into taking yoga/meditation to relax, decompress and unwind. i'm uptight, i don't want the stresses of the world to weigh me down. i want to use the philosophy of yoga to help me concentrate, recenter myself, realign my thoughts and just re-lax. so, my wonderful father who attends yoga classes bought a months unlimited yoga pass to the studio that he attends. he raves about it. he enjoys it. which makes me happy.

he called last night and asked if i would go with him to a 10am class this morning. i agreed. i love spending time with my dad. i had already taken yoga classes, i had also studied yoga as a part of religion classes, i understood/understand its purposes. i am not looking for an aerobic yoga session. i had explained this to my dad prior to his invitation to the class, but i had to try a different studio and class at some point. so dad arrived promptly at 9 this sunday morning for our 10 am HOT yoga class.

the heat didn't bother me, however, if i am that hot again, i should be on the beach somewhere facing an ocean, not staring at some sweaty persons ass. the instructor, very polite woman, kept raising the volume of the music in the class as if it were an aerobic class, therefore distracting me from my breathing, form, and centering of myself, that bothered me, slightly. she also, didn't seem to correct anyones' form, modify anyones' positions, or make suggestions as to how one would go about modifying anyones' positions.

luckily (for me), i am familiar with poses and moves, so, even all of this didn't bother me that much. what did bother me was, there was no time given in between each move to concentrate and be sure i (or any other beginner), was stable, ready to continue with the move/pose. i'm trying to work on the breathing and pose and shes already 2 poses down the line. that's not her fault, its how she runs her class. at one point i looked around the room and at least 5 out of 14 people had poor posture, weren't breathing in the fashion in which i was taught and the way i knew that yoga promotes you to be breathing, and the form was all over the place.

i began to get nauseous, i started to remind myself to go at my own pace and focus on my own breath. something my friend Michelle, a hard working, full time practicing yogi would say. every time i would refocus and go at my own pace i was 3 poses behind everyone else. i became more nauseous. i started to get a migraine. i stopped, drank water, rested. it wasn't the positions that were difficult, those weren't the problem, the heat, again, became fine after a while, i just felt so sick, i thought i was going to throw up.

i thought i was going to have to run out of the room. but the instructor told us at the beginning of the class not to ever leave the room, because they gradually heat the room up and gradually cool down the room, otherwise you can get really sick. so here i am, sick as a dog, migraine, ready to vomit, thinking, which is worse, throwing up in here, or running out into the cooled hallway perhaps fainting and being 'that' girl! i sat down again, focused on breathing, thought of Michelle and told myself to calm down. it's hard to calm down when you are so sick, and you can't breath because it's 100 fucking degrees and you 're going to vomit and you have a migraine where you feel like your eye balls might just explode out of your head. i waited, until finally the class was over.

i ran out, washed my face, drank more water, which wasn't a good idea, and couldn't wait to get home. i've been in bed ever since. well, first i showered because i was covered in sweat and grossness, then i took a migraine pill, had some coffee, food and more water.

needless to say, i will not attend hot yoga again, and not because it was hot, but because i am not interested in getting my heart rate up while doing yoga, i'm interested in getting my mind, body and spirit a little more centered and refocused. my poor dad though, he keep telling me "major failure huh?". which it wasn't. you don't know unless you try, right, but with that said, i had done a considerable amount of reading on hot yoga and had determined that it wasn't what i was looking for. i did get to spend a sunday morning with my dad, so with the bad came some good, which is always nice; balances out the universe.

a yogi i was not today. and for the record i didn't actually throw up in the yoga studio. although, if i did it would have been a tough choice between puking on my dad or on one of the super lame hipsters in the class with the "OM" tattoo's; i'm pretty sure i was going for a hipster with a "OM" symbol tattoo.