A couple of months ago I bought a Groupon for a month of Bikram Yoga at a studio near our house. Some of you are asking, what's Groupon? Groupon is this fabulous daily deal that comes in email (or I think you can get it through Twitter or Facebook) that gives discounts on restaurants, stores, services and other things in your area. Every day is a different deal and you only have until midnight that night to buy it. Some of the deals that we have bought are $50 gift certificate for the Gap for $25, $30 gift certificate to a local restaurant for $15, a great deal on a bike tune-up, that kind of stuff. My favorite all time offer was pole dancing lessons (don't worry, Mom, we didn't buy that one). I am subscribed to the Dallas and Fort Worth deals, so I get two different emails a day. It's fantastic and you get to buy all these things that you didn't even know you needed.
Which brings me to the Bikram Yoga deal. One month of yoga for $20. My friend, Jenny, does it, so I thought I'd give it a try. Bikram (pronounced beak-ram by a couple of the teachers I've had) is heated yoga. That's right, they heat the room. Like an hour and a half of yoga isn't hard enough. I keep forgetting to look at the thermostat when I leave the room and check exactly how hot it is in there, because I am in such a rush to get out of the room by the time the class is over, but it has to be at least 90 degrees in that room. When you walk in it smells like sweat and heat mixed together, kind of like a sauna except people have their clothes on and it's not all steamy.
As I said, I bought the Groupon a couple of months ago. I though it expired in 2011 and I had plenty of time to cash it in, but then I checked and it expired on December 31, 2010. I kept thinking I was going to start using it, but then Charlie was traveling and the girls weren't really sleeping through the night and Jenny scared me about how hard it was so I kept putting it off. Finally on December 31 I went in and asked them if it was still valid. Yes, I could use it, but the clock started that day and my free month ended on January 30. No problem. I still waited a week and then we had a near ice storm and the weather and roads and crazy drivers kept me at home. So I waited another week. Several months and two weeks later I finally attended my first yoga class.
It was hard. Well, the yoga itself wasn't that hard. I've been to classes where we did much harder poses. However, they weren't as long and the room wasn't a sauna. The guy in front of me was dripping with sweat. Not just a little, a lot. You stand on a mat and towel for most of the class, but there is about ten minutes when you are off the mat. After those ten minutes there were puddles where that guy had stood. Even the instructor is sweating by the time the class is over and she doesn't even do the poses. She just tells you what to do and walks around making sure you're doing it. Yes, it was hard, and the whole time I was there I didn't really want to be there. To top it off, at the end the instructor says that if you are just starting they highly recommend that you come back within 24 hours. You really have to put the effort in to make it worthwhile. A little part of me died inside when they said that.
I did go back the next night. Know what? It was still hard, but not as much. My body adjusted to the heat a little better and I didn't feel so overwhelmed when I left. The third night was even better. I had a harder time holding the poses because by now my muscles were tired. I haven't worked out, I mean really worked out, in a very long time. Climbing the stairs is a little difficult. I hate the heat and wish the class was only an hour instead of an hour and a half, but here's what I like about it: 1) You don't eat as much. They tell you not to eat two to three hours before the class, because otherwise you might throw up. You can't eat during the class. After the class you don't want to eat, because you feel like you'll throw up (see a pattern here?). 2) You drink a lot more water. If you don't drink enough water and you're not hydrated, you're going to throw up (or pass out). 3) It's peaceful, quiet, and I'm doing exercise. 4) After three days I weighed myself and I had lost five pounds. Now, I weighed myself right after the class, so some of that could have been water weight, but I'm sure a few of those pounds were real. That's awesome.
I'm not very good at most of the poses, because I'm not very flexible. I can never completely straighten my legs, my knees are always bent, and there are a few poses I just can't do. There's one where you bend over and have to keep your chest to your thighs and they tell you that you should look like a Japanese ham sandwich. Huh? What does that mean? Do Japanese people even eat ham? I would know what they meant if they said a Jewish ham sandwich, because that would just be two pieces of bread and some mustard or mayo, but no ham. But a Japanese ham sandwich, I'm stumped. There are a couple of poses I like, because I can do them, but my favorite is the dead man's pose. Yes, that's the rest position on the floor where you just lie there and breathe. Not hard at all, just resting. I could do that one all day.
So I'll go back a few more times and see how it goes. If I start to really like it I may even try to find it in the budget to start a membership. I don't know. If not, I hope this is the motivation I need to get me going and start exercising in some way, because something is definitely better than nothing.
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