***

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Let’s begin with a rousing round of abject failure. I did not sweat today, except for one brief period during the afternoon when it got really stuffy in the office. I did, however, complete a routine from a really bland yoga DVD, which I balanced out with an entire bag of Lundberg Sesame & Seaweed Rice Chips and an absurd amount of cheese-slathered Mexican food. After all of this excitement, I crawled into bed to read a book. Can you feel the burn? I can’t.

Thursday, July 10, 2014

7:30am Community Morning Yoga Flow. There were three of us in the class, which was both awesome (there weren’t a lot of eyes on my ridiculously poor form) and terrible (there weren’t a lot of places to hide). We began by cat-cowing for an eternity, which rendered me unable to hold my first down dog for more than thirty pitiful, shoulder-wrenching seconds. However, besides not being able to achieve any pose that required my hips to flex, I completed just about every other asana to some half-assed degree, worked up a small bit of perspiration, and felt quite zennish upon heading home. Floating on my yoga bubble, I made a beeline for Trader Joe’s and bought all of the fruits and vegetables, which I used to make a lumpy smoothie. Despite the non-smoothness of said creation, I felt very satisfied with myself. Om.

Friday, July 11, 2014

I was emotionally ready to tackle the 7:00am Community Sunrise Ashtanga Yoga class – strangely excited, even – but upon rising from my slumber, realized that the muscley part that connects my neck and shoulders felt like it was going to make a clean break if I attempted one more down dog, so I stayed home and made sad eyes at my yoga mat instead.

6:30pm Yoga Booty Ballet. I stopped at ROSS Dress For Less after work and bought a cheap pair of cozy below-the-knee-length workout pants. I made the game-day decision to wear them to class and upon ripping off the tag, noticed that it said in very giant, very bold, very capital letters: MATERNITY. I bought maternity knickers. I reluctantly pulled them on and stared at myself in the mirror for a while. More specifically, I stared at my belly. I pooched it out. I sucked it in. I judged from the front, back, and both sides. I guess there was a bit of extra material around there…okay, enough extra material that I could jack these things up to my armpits with fabric to spare. However, I was going to be late to class if I continued to stare at the maternal pouchiness of my pantaloons, so I rolled the waistband down four or fifty times and off I went.

As I walked in, I noticed a sign on the door that read “Yoga Belly Ballet” instead of “Yoga Booty Ballet,” but thought nothing of it…until I saw the instructor, who was eight months pregnant. I then looked around and saw another pregnant lady, and another pregnant lady. It suddenly seemed very prescient of me to be wearing maternity knickers. I was one of the tribe.

Turns out this was just a regular class with an absurdly high percentage of preggos in attendance. Still, I stared at the pouch in my pants throughout the entire class, wondering if the other people were wondering if I was pregnant, too. Other than feeling vaguely like a kangaroo, I had a pretty good time.

Saturday, July 12, 2014

Given my schedule, these were my options today:  Bollywood Dance, Samba Body, Salsa Fitness, and something called U-Jam Fitness. The horror. Believe me when I say that I wanted to immediately abandon this experiment, and half-hoped my friend MaryEllen would cancel our morning tennis session, just so I could just take the early yoga class and skip all of the scary dance classes.

However, MaryEllen, ever a woman of her word, did not cancel, leaving me to face my two-left-footed fears. Out of the array of frightening options, I chose Samba Body, conducted by a woman named Fransini who is the star of a DVD featuring her signature workout. I was tangibly frightened of taking a class from a woman with both a fancy DVD and six visually-confirmed individual abs, but it turns out that Samba Body was actually pretty fun, though a bit calf-threatening. If there was one part of me that felt completely at home here, it was my Cuban butt; Fransini seemed pleased at the many ways I was able to shake it, and I left feeling mildly booty-proud.

Sunday, July 13, 2014

I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. My feet were raw, blistered, beat-up, and I just couldn’t today. And On The Fourth Day, She Rested.

Monday, July 14, 2014

7:00am Community Sunrise Ashtanga Yoga. When I walked in, the sort of smarmy guy at the desk asked in a very concerned voice, “Have you done Ashtanga before? Do you know what it’s about?” and in my head I was thinking, “Stretching and poses and whatever,” and what I said was, “Yeah, I think so. I mean – it’s been a while, probably.” He offered me a look that was half-pity, half-worry, and I ignored both of those things.

The instructor was fifteen minutes late and offered some sort of lame excuse about getting lost when his phone died, but it was far too early for me to feign any workable levels of indignancy, so I just sat there complacently digesting a cashew-flavored Larabar. Once class started, however, I understood the front desk dude’s concern – our instructor moved like a man with a blazing fire at his ass and I was sweating profusely within five minutes trying to keep up. We chaturanga’d incessantly, over and over and over like prisoners enduring some sort of yogic punishment, and I estimate that I spent at least half of the class slithering back and forth across my mat, my biceps progressively weakening. Near the end, while everyone else was dislocating their joints all willy-nilly to get into their impossible poses, I just sort of oscillated between sitting cross-legged and kind of laying on my belly, prompting the instructor to pretty much completely ignore me.

I should mention that there were only three people in the class, which made it even more brilliant when I attempted one of this guy’s stupid moves and let out a really ripping crack of a fart, which in the echo chamber of the studio sounded like a small bomb. Someone in the class might have stifled a laugh.

(Disclosure: that “someone” was me.)

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

I planned on attending Community Flow Yoga at 7:00am, but unfortunately most of my body was going OUCH OUCH OUCH OUCH from the Ashtanga hurtin’ and I was forced to eat a bottle of ibuprofen instead.

I went to the 9:30pm Community Flow Yoga session while still digesting a belly full of expensive birthday sushi (thank you, boss-man). As I sluggishly moved through the poses, I realized that while most of my muscles were violently sore, I also felt stronger than I did a week ago…maybe emotionally as well as physically. What is happening to me? Do I actually like this???

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

The only thing I sweated over today, my birthday, was whether or not I could handle another tequila shot.

Thursday, July 17, 2014

Despite my package supposedly expiring yesterday, the front desk lady let me use one last pass, so I took a frightening class called Muev8, which was so fast and furious that it made Samba Body seem like mall walking. I feel like I have no problem dancing with some semblance of coordination and fluidity when there’s not a giant mirror and sixteen well-toned women in front of me, but I lose all sense of style and grace in that kind of setting. I did, however, sweat off at least 5% of my body weight, dripping all the way to the grocery store afterwards to get a juice, even though what I really wanted was an industrial-sized wedge of milk chocolate and a wheelchair.

***

Epilogue

I’m kinda proud of myself. I’ve never spent a week so gung-ho about putting myself to the physical test and I think that ultimately, this forced fitness blitz was fantastic food for my mind, body, and soul – “nourishing,” if you wanna get all Gwyneth about it (which you probably don’t). I can never remember that maxim about how long it takes for you to establish a routine with something, but I suddenly find myself looking forward to breaking a sweat, working on creating peace of mind, and slowly building a partner for my solitary ab.

Now if you’ll pardon me, I have a yoga mat to unroll.

This may seem obvious to you, I know, but to be fair, humans don’t know how to use them, either. Thing is, the odds are really stacked in our favor here, what with the opposable thumbs and complex brain functions and all, but still we absentmindedly paw away at the dispensers like petulant tabbies, leaving a trail of shredded destruction strewn throughout public restrooms all across America.

I started thinking about this paper towel business the other day after watching a TED talk where, in summary, a man demonstrates that all you need is one paper towel (of any variety! any size! any shape! any color!) and a deceptively simple Shake, Fold, Wipe technique in order to adequately dry your hands: WATCH IT HERE, since I have no idea how to embed video in this post.

I bow to your greatness, Reverend Paper O’Towel!

In the name of experimentation, I tried it – and it worked. Buzzing from my pseudo-scientific high, I suggested the Great Paper Towel Challenge to some friends of mine at dinner the next evening. Calloused hands were displayed and doubt was expressed, but the TED towel talk proved victorious, winning two waste-reducing converts along the way!

This is where I let you in on a little secret: it’s not magic. It’s not really about being an anal-retentive, obsessive-compulsive, fantatical Shake/Fold/Wipe adherent – it’s about being MINDFUL. In other words, it’s about thinking about what you’re doing before you do it.

Shocking, I know.

The great thing is, that even though this simple technique gives us one awesome, small step towards reducing paper waste on our pretty little planet, this concept also applies to things that aren’t made out of paper…like, basically EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE WORLD. For instance:

- Excited about potato chips, but always eat a disgustingly inappropriate amount of them? Try mindfulness! Taste the chips, eat one at a time, stop when you’re satisfied! WHOOPEE!

- Love the bargain-stuffed aisles of Target, but hate the fact that you drop at least a Benjamin every time you shop there? Try mindfulness! Do you need it? Will it improve your life? ZOMG!

- Have to drive one million miles to work in hateful traffic, and find yourself alternating between wanting to cry yourself into the office and wanting to ram every car in sight? Try mindfulness! Breathe before you beep! Sing before you yell! Find one single thing to appreciate about your drive and go ahead and appreciate the living daylights out of it! YOUR LIFE IS TOTALLY CHANGING!

Phew.
[Retreats from soapbox]

Can you tell I just started learning how to meditate?

My fat cat broke my neck.

To be fair, he’s just big-boned and was probably just the proverbial camel-straw on top of a long line of terrible postures, poor exercise form, and body-thrashing sleep habits, but when I scooped up the little furry porker from the living room floor the other night, I felt something weird happen in my neck, and it’s been a veritable pain parade ever since.

The hurt started as a sharp pinch at the base of the right side of my neck. I crawled into bed that night and gingerly placed my head on my pillow, drifting off into an uneventful sleep. When I woke up, however, the soreness radiated down my upper back and across my shoulder, giving me a sort of half-hearted Frankenwalk. I popped some ibuprofen, packed a heating pad, and went to work.

That evening, I went to bed early and woke up repeatedly throughout the night because the strain was so intense. I whimpered my way through a few patches of sleep and was treated the next morning to a delightful combo of I’d-rather-have-a-tooth-pulled pain and zombie-level stiffness. Rolling over in bed required a complex weight-shifting maneuver, armpit shaving was aborted, and checking my blind spot verged on the impossible.

On Day Three of Neckmageddon, I staggered into work a blurry-eyed shell of my former self, my new daily trifecta of heating pad, ibuprofen, and tears at the ready. My co-worker suggested acupuncture, the boss-man suggested I go home and lay down, but I stubbornly decided to slump into my excessively non-ergonomic chair until lunchtime, when I’d grimace my way over to the local cheap massage parlor.

I explained my predicament to the hippie healer lady, who summoned me to lay down face first on the table and began asking me a series of questions that wouldn’t be out of place in a therapy session. She slicked lavender lotion down my back, encouraging me to envision my muscles melting under her fingertips with each pass. Cloaked in her gentle patchouli cloud, I drifted away until she broke the trance by jabbing her thumb directly in the crook of my neck.

“Does it hurt here?”
“MMnnnnnnffffaaagggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
“Okay, then. Let’s get down to business.”

Over the next hour, I let out tiny yelps as she poked and prodded, pushed and pulled until freed from her knotty bondage by the clock.

“Okay…that’s about all I can do for you without severely bruising your tissue. Good luck.”

Good luck? Sigh.

I felt marginally better afterwards, with a bit more movement in the area, but the pain dogged me the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, when I tried to drown it in the better part of an entire bottle of delicious red wine. Defeated, I fell into a fitful, boozy sleep.

The pain was still present when I woke up this morning, but I had an ace up my sleeve—my friend and I were going to a Korean spa and I was going to heat the bejeezus out of my neck using every methodology possible. As soon as we arrived, I dumped myself in the nearest hot tub, angling my shoulder awkwardly towards one of the jets, praying to the Korean spa gods to make everything feel better again. We boiled ourselves in various pools until an older woman came over and yelled out our numbers—it was our turn for the scrubdown.

When I initially booked the (in)famous Korean spa buff service, I figured my neck would be perfectly fine by the time this day rolled around. Now I was afraid that not only was this tiny, gruff, black-lingerie-clad elderly woman going to rough up my skin until I bled, but also that she was going to leave me paralyzed.

“You! Face down!” she barked. I complied. She twisted my head sideways (ouch!) and began roughhousing my feet and calves (ouch! ouch!), then my outer thighs and inner thighs (ouch! ouch! ouch!), then my—holy shit, is this woman buffing in between my butt cheeks?! Yes, yes she is. I temporarily forgot about my neck as she ran her cheese grater mitt things over my butt, then started applying so much force to my back that I thought she was going to push me right off the edge of the slick vinyl table.

“You! Turn over!” and again, I complied. At this point, my body reached a sort of numbness that I likened to getting a tattoo—after a while, it’s just sensation. She scrubbed the living daylights out of my shins and kneecaps and then—holy shit, is this woman buffing my bikini line?! Yes, yes she is. She then made intimate acquaintance with my belly, my boobs, my armpits, and my neck.

“You! On your side!” I executed my now-perfected weight-shifting maneuver with all the graceful elegance of a beached mackerel and plopped myself on one side.

“NO! ON YOUR SIDE!”

“I am on my side,” I protested. But apparently I was not sideways enough, because with a dissatisfied grunt she palmed my entire right butt cheek and pushed me into a position that allowed her access to whatever portions of my body hadn’t yet come under the executioner’s mitt.

As a finishing touch, she slapped my thigh and told me to roll over once more, half-heartedly shampooing my hair, then shoving me forward into a sitting position, and before I could protest, pushing my legs apart and plunking a giant bowl of lukewarm water in between them.

“Wash your face! Then go shower! YOU LEAVE TIP HERE!!!”

I splashed the water on my face, thanked her, and walked off towards the showers in a strangely satisfied daze. After approximately thirty glasses of water, a round through the various jimjilbang saunas, and another dip in the pools, I left feeling infinitely better than I had in the morning.

Exactly one sushi lunch and one nap later, I feel…reborn. I know the ibuprofen, wine, heating pad, and hippie healer helped, but I gotta think that somewhere during that vaguely violent afternoon scrubdown, that cranky old Korean lady scared the living shit out of my neck muscles, finally bringing peace to my pain-ravaged body, while possibly also leaving me with a teensy bit of mental scarring.

Regardless: lingerie-clad elderly woman, I salute you.