I'm Writing This in a Lotus Position

In keeping with the plan of my 101 things in 1001 days, I attended my first ever Yoga class this week.

In an oh-so-fortuituous move, my YMCA added to its current lineup of Yoga I and Power Yoga a new class, Remedial Yoga for Dummies. (Okay, they call it Yoga Foundations, or something boring like that, but we all know it's Remedial Yoga for Dummies.)

I was pretty stoked when I walked into a dimly-lit room with new-agey music playing, and the instructor informed us that this was OUR yoga practice, that the next 45 minutes were OURS, and ordered us to let go of the stresses of the day . . . cool. From there, though, while I was still waiting for someone to come along and offer me a pedicure, and a nice cup of tea with milk, and oh, while we're at it, some dessert, she calmly demonstrated the downward dog, told us to try it, and FORGOT ABOUT US.

I am not kidding. That yoga instructor went outside, had HER pedicure and dessert, then a post-pedicure cigarette, and I swear, she may have had a not-so-quickie, all while I was still hanging upside down in a damn downward dog. SERIOUSLY, it was at least an hour. Maybe two.

Then. Then, she calmly instructs us to raise our right leg up behind our heads, then SWING it through the middle, place our knee directly below our right hand, our ankle directly below our left hand, then LAY DOWN on top of our poor right leg, which had never, ever done anything to deserve such an indignity.

I tell you what, I had never considered doing such a thing with my right leg before. And I was completely astonished (did I tell you that astonished is my new favorite word? because it is, for some reason) that my leg would do such a thing.

Well, sort of. While my legs were pretty okay with being raised up behind my head, and actually pretty excited about the whole make-like-a-pretzel endeavor, the SWINGING through the middle was more of a flop it down underneath, then use both hands to haul it through the middle and prod it into place.

Let's not even mention the whole "shoulder stand" episode, which was much less like something I remember from my cheerleading days, and more like a try-out for Cirque du Soleil.

Namaste, indeed.