Last night I missed my Zumba class. When I went to sign up online the
class was already full, probably due to the influx of New Years Resolutionists.
I really dislike trying to find space for myself in an overfull classroom and I
didn’t want to be one of those people who shows up even though they already
know the limit on people has been met – so I stayed home. Also, it was really
cold outside and I was curled up under a blanket watching Ender’s Game.
It happens.
In better news, a month ago I started practicing Yoga when one of my fellow
gym-goers pointed out to me that it improves the quality of her sleep. The beginner’s
class is conveniently situated immediately following Thursday night Zumba, so I
gave it a try.
For a long time I’ve had reasons for why I didn’t want to try Yoga.
First and foremost: it does not burn a lot of calories. This remains true; an
hour long Yoga session for someone of my size burns somewhere under the 200
calorie mark – however, when I add
Yoga to my existing schedule of three hours of Zumba, two minimum two mile
walks, and one weight lifting session per week, that argument becomes invalid.
The point of Yoga isn’t to burn calories but to provide other healthy benefits
(similar to why I lift weights). I do other things to burn lots of calories.
I also thought that it would be too frustrating for me to move slowly,
and that my balance is extremely poor. Since my Yoga class is immediately
following one of my Zumba classes it’s actually nice to slow down after jumping
around for an hour. My balance being poor? Well, yeah – that’s a problem. No
way around it.
Three things I’ve noted about Yoga so far: the first is that people
involved in this practice are extremely kind and helpful, even people other
than the teacher are very encouraging. The second is that I’m phenomenally bad
at this. Partially because of my aforementioned lack of balance, but my body is
also an unwieldy size and shape for Yoga. A big part of it is learning to
smoothly transition between poses and right now that’s totally impossible for
me. I fall out of one pose and hit the mat with an embarrassing thud, then pick
myself up and brace for the next. I know that people of my size can do it
correctly because I’ve seen them, I figure it’s just a matter of building the
appropriate strength for the task – and building strength is one of my goals in
doing this anyway, so more’s the better. Lastly, when I point my feet (which
you have to do in a lot of poses) the bottoms of them immediately and painfully
cramp. I don’t know if that’s a flat-footed person problem or a beginner
problem but… OW. It sucks.
On the positive side it turns out I’m pretty flexible. Either because I
was already stretching a lot for my other activities or because it’s a side
effect of the unusually loose ligaments in my body, something an Orthopedic
Doctor noticed while treating me for one of my numerous ankle-turning injuries.
Is it embarrassing to be the one in class that can do the least? Yup.
It bugs me to no end. But I’ve been told a few times now that my competitive
instinct couldn’t be further out of place in this particular sport, so I need
to focus a lot less on what is hard for me that everyone else seems to find easy
and look deeper for little improvements in myself.
In short: I’m way out of my comfort zone with this one, but I’m not
giving up.
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