Have you ever tried to relax? I mean really relax. Taking deep breaths, meditating on quietness, emptying your mind kind of relaxing. It's hard to do. Especially when life includes iPods, cell phones, blackberries and all sorts of other electronic devices beeping at us from all sides.
My idea of relieving stress, especially once I'm already stressed-out, is throwing and breaking things. I've been known to wipe out a knick-knack shelve in under 5 minutes! But then I feel a little better. So why would people think calmly breathing in a room full of calmly breathing strangers help me?? But still, it's something that might help me - so I gave it a shot.
I signed up for a free yoga group and talked myself into going. I made it into the yoga room and froze. In front of me stood 20 clones of the same woman in various stages of stretching. I thought there was some weird mirror thing going on; I saw no differences in these women! They were all 5 feet 7 inches or taller, wearing similar colors of the same tanktop, slightly loose yoga pants (I didn't even know there was such a thing as yoga pants!), same tight pony/bun in their blonde to brunette with blonde highlighted hair, with all the same build - slim to skinny. These were no ordinary women - they were yoga-women! What did I walk into - Barbie's Stretch & Tone Studio?!
That's when I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror - all 5 feet 3 inches, 200+ pounds of me! I have never felt shorter or fatter in my entire life! I wore my typical work-out attire: baggy black sweat pants, a very large T-shirt that I usually wear to bed as a nightgown, and the Dr. Scholls walking sneakers with gel soles that I spent a lot of money on to only wear the few times I work out. My chestnut hair is pulled back into a ponytail, but tons of whisps stick out all over. I didn't care about any of that 10 minutes ago! Now, I might as well have been standing there naked!
Then it began - the yoga-ing. That's when it finally hit me: big girls, like me, don't do yoga!
1 comment:
Leala, even after losing 100+ pounds and changing my appearance to be as Barbie-like as possible, I still bump into things and knock knick-knacks off shelves. You should see me in yoga class - falling on my ass every 5 minutes, unable to sit still through the chanting... Anyway, there is light at the end of the tunnel, but what they don't tell you is that your eyes need a lot of time to adjust to it :)
Post a Comment