Personal Essay about going to yoga

"If you do not suffer now, you will suffer for the rest of your life," David hissed in my ear as I bent painfully backwards as far as my body would allow. David, the Bikram yoga instructor, had become a seething fiend the second we entered into the one hundred and five degree room. Outside he had been shy and unassuming, with about as much presence as fat on his body. There had seemed to be very little of either.
Pain coursed through my lower back and knifed its way down to my upper legs. This guy is crazy, I thought to myself. I looked around. The steamy room was full of an assortment of colorful yoga mats, occupied by a mix of women so healthy that the organic food almost seeped out of their pores. Our mats faced a gigantic mirror, covering the length of the wall. As I struggled to bend backwards even half as far as the least flexible, a sixty year old woman with white hair, I hated them.
Here I was, straining through yoga once again. I have averaged about four class sessions per year for the last five years. It takes me two sessions to give up, and about six months to forget just how much I abhor it. Yet I kept coming back. Why? Maybe it was because of Hal, my high school's athletic trainer. One time while stretching my hamstrings he gave me a disgusted look and said to me, appalled, "You are the least flexible person I've ever stretched." Or maybe it was the debilitating weekly muscle pulls, or seeing my grandmother hobbling around, or the general hotness of middle aged yoga teachers. Whatever it is, I know that my health is important, the weakest part of my health is my flexibility, and yoga is the best remedy. And, oh yeah, all of my friends and family want me to do it.
On one hand, my friend's and families gentle pushing makes me want to go in there and show them that anything they can do I can do better. On the other hand though, I feel as if my friends and family are saying, “Nathan, you are not okay the way you are. You need yoga.” Since I have trustworthy advisors who truly want the best for me, I listen to them, returning again and again to classes I dislike. I go to yoga begrudgingly, as one would to a dentist, not because it feels right, but because those around me have me convinced that yoga is a treatment I can’t risk forgoing.
While I was young, my parents figured out how to get me to do what they wanted. They got me to take baths, a daily chore I despised, by saying sternly, "Don't take a bath. Don't take a bath, Nathan." Within seconds I would be angrily tossing my clothes along the hall as I stomped towards the bathroom. Even though this contrarian spirit has subsided over the years, I still notice myself particularly annoyed at being told what to do. Ironically, I often find myself rebelling against the little things. I know that when my friend Emiliano says, “Nathan, put on your coat, its cold outside” he is looking out for me. I also know that when Shane says, “You better not put tomato in that wrap. It’s going to get soggy,” he is not being overbearing, but simply helpful. Yet I constantly struggle with the idea of others deciding any part of my life for me. It is almost with bitterness that I keep trying yoga. The “anything you can do I can do better” part of me faces nearly insurmountable odds, but has yet to be defeated.
In the attic of my parent’s house, I have a growing collection of yoga do-it-yourself dvds, accumulated from years of Christmas presents. The routine is the same. Soon before Christmas I ask my mom for one, having forgotten about the rest piling up in the attic. She is thrilled that I asked. On Christmas day, when the elation has died down and everyone has gone off to their own parts of the house to play with new toys or read new books, I pop in my new tape, pull out my mom's mat, concentrate my mind, and begin. Then, about a third of the way into the tape, I hit eject, roll up the mat, carry the dvd up to my room, and dump it in my "junk corner." By the next day I've forgotten about it, yet eleven months later yoga seems unavoidably necessary.
So I find myself at Bikram's yoga. This time it was Jenna, my roommate's girlfriend, who convinced me to come to class. It was hard not to be convinced by her. She came back from the studio a couple of times a week positively glowing. Not only did she look like she was getting the workout of her life, but she also could not stop going on about how nice the people were. I'll give it a shot, I thought to myself. She said that the room was the temperature of a sauna and had forty percent humidity to help range of motion. I decided to go even though I dislike extreme heat, and never manage more than a few minutes in a sauna. And a steam room, never.
When I got to the well maintained studio, everyone was talking animatedly in small groups. Jenna introduced me to David, the head instructor, who explained to me that the trial deal was ten days for ten dollars. The more times you came for the first ten days, he said, the cheaper the trial deal was.
"Sounds good," I replied, anxious to put on the airs of a yoga veteran. "I forgot my mat at home," I lied, not owning a mat. "Can I borrow one from the studio?"
"Sure," David said sweetly, "but in the future, please remember to bring one of your own." David pointed me in the direction of the men's changing room. It was empty. I came out wearing soccer shorts, a soccer jersey, and a look of sheer determination that stated my claim to all who noticed me: "I am a real yoga practitioner."
The class was supposed to begin at 5:30, and by 5:25 the adjacent yoga room had two rows of mats facing the mirror. Next to each mat was a filled water bottle; at least ten of the fourteen were Nalgenes. People milled expectantly, as an anxious fan would while waiting for football teams to reappear from their locker rooms for the kickoff. There were thirteen women and me. Next to me were my friends Jenna, short, frizzy haired, full of energy, and Lauren, a skinny Environmental science major with long legs and nice smile. Both were full Bikram's initiates.
At 5:30 on the dot the door slammed shut and David strutted purposefully to the back of the room. People fled their impromptu congregations for their mats. The heaters whirred to life. Since every 90 minute class is the same, David's barking orders were hardly needed by everyone else. They already knew what to do. I, on the other hand, needed closer attention.
I looked around. Yoga is strenuous. As with anything strenuous, you'd imagine that people would be staring menacingly into their own reflections, gritting their teeth, urging themselves further. Yet more often people were glaring at each other, trying to get further into the poses than their rival. As the sixty year old with white hair bent her back sideways, she kept her eyes focused on Jenna in front of her like a lion crawling through the high grass towards a stray zebra. No one looked at me like they were everyone else. Was this was because I was not enough of a challenge, or because I was not yet a member of the group? Or was it both?
I believe in friendly competition to push people towards excellence and while I am as competitive as they come, I tell myself that I don't let my need to win ruin my enjoyment or strain my relationships. Sure there have been some high impact board games, but it's all in good fun, right? Yet the competition in the yoga studio stifled me.
As I entered each pose, I looked over at the old woman to see if this might be the pose that I could go deeper into than her. It never happened. I was unquestionably the least flexible. One pose called for me to connect my hands together over my head and lean back as far as possible. Apparently I wasn't going back far enough because David came up behind me and started imploring me to push further. "That's as far as I can go," I gasped.
"Further" he insisted.
I leaned back. My erectors stretched, stretched, then gave way. My upper body plummeted backwards to the ground. David tried to grab me, but I crashed viciously through his outstretched arms and onto the floor. Everyone turned towards me, unsure whether to continue their routine.
I lasted another thirty minutes, just over an hour in all. I had been fighting off waves of nausea for over fifteen minutes and then, as I entered the camel pose, it was suddenly all too much. I picked up my water and made a bee line for the door.
"Stay," David said menacingly. "Stay, you will regret it later." And then when I had almost reached the door, he said so everyone could hear, "weakness, weakness."
Thirty minutes later the doors opened and the real yoga practitioners exited into the lobby. They were drenched in sweat and wore broad, fulfilled smiles. I was already fully changed and sat on a wooden bench reading Jurassic Park. I felt like a failure.
"Are you okay?" an attractive brunette from my college asked me on her way to the woman's changing room.
"I'm okay. I was pretty pathetic in there wasn't I?"
"Everyone leaves early their first time. Don't get down." she said sweetly. "How does your body feel?"
I stood up and took two long strides. "Woah. Actually pretty good," I said.
"Well, that's all that counts" and she was gone to change.
My body felt good; she was right about that. Each muscle seemed to have been shifted into a higher gear, fed high performance oil. But then I reminded myself that it might just be feeling better in comparison to the previous hour of silly putty treatment. Or perhaps I was just finding another reason to quit.
Jenna came out of the changing room gleaming. We grabbed our stuff and exited the studio. I was in a bad mood. I kept replaying what the girl had said. I asked myself, Is my physical well-being all that counts? What about my emotional state?
"I was able to touch my knees with my head today" she said to me enthusiastically. "Listen, don't worry about not being able to stay in there for the whole time. Everyone struggles at first."
"Yeah."
"Don't you feel great?"
"Sure."
We walked on in silence. The truth was, no, I didn't feel great, at least not as far as my happiness was concerned. In fact, I felt a general feeling of malaise. I tried to understand it. A few sunny spring blocks later, I still wasn't sure why I was so upset. I mean, I had pushed myself as far as I could possibly go and, as I often said, "all real competition is with one's self." But it didn't feel like that now. I was the only one who couldn't do all of the poses. I was the only one who left early. And I was definitely the only one who crashed against the ground.
Jenna looked at me and said, "Sarah didn't have a very good practice today. She must have been feeling under the weather."
"You were watching her?" I asked innocently. Jenna and Sarah had been locking eyes like juvenile Billy goats all session.
"Oh, we all watch each other. But just to help each other reach our potential."
This camaraderie irked me. In my mind these women were my competition, the peons that I had to overcome, to crush into the ground en route to victory. But there was no overcoming to be done here. These women actually did care more about the others reaching their potential than besting them. Not only was I the only one wishing negative thoughts on the fellow strugglers in the hot room, but I also knew that I would never be able escape my position of cute, incompetent guy.
Yet it wasn’t even my ineptness that made me feel so downright sad. I had long ago come to grips with the fact that I wasn’t very limber, and I was not ashamed to admit it. Nor could my frustration with the competition in the yoga studio take the blame for my mood. What was it then?
As time elapses, I’ve realized that I’m still that little boy angrily stomping off to the tub. I’m so scared of losing who I think I am that I go to terrific ends to affirm my individuality. Throughout high school I acquired over thirty soccer jerseys, rarely wearing anything else. I liked soccer jerseys, but the real reason I wore them so often was that I wanted to defy labeling.
I, like that little boy, still feel threatened by the world. Even now, when confronted with a coterie, I would rather sulk to the side than change myself to fit in. I think that is why I am made so uncomfortable by yoga. Whenever I enter into a yoga studio, I feel like I don’t belong. Gone are my conversation starters about sports. Gone are my brusque jokes and my joyful antics. Instead, I must be quiet and calm, there with myself, but expressionless. I must do the pose the leader says at the same time, in the same way, with the same look on your face as everyone else. In yoga, I must be in step with everyone else, exactly what I've spent my whole life avoiding.

What do you think? Comments are greatly, greatly appreciated.

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