Why I Regretted Ever Attempting to Get in Shape.

I, Christine, am out of shape.

In the past couple of years, I've slowly metamorphed into a hippo; a non-vegetarian, unagressive (unless country music comes on), unable to swim hippo. Although I think hippos are cute, I do not enjoy being one.

Also, hippos splatter their shit everywhere. It's nasty. True story.

So my newly-engaged friend Swizzy and my not-engaged self decided to join some sort of fitness class. We ended up deciding to take hot yoga classes. Because hey, we love slow excercises and we like the heat. So we could sweat without having to work hard. Cause we're lazy like that.

Because someone with a ring was running late, we had to switch from the 5pm class to the 6:30 class. The yoga teacher had instructedus not to eat anything for the couple of hours leading up tto the class. But I was like "Fuck that shit, I'm eating a cookie", and since we were now on a health kick, I decided to balance out the cookie by drinking a whole bottle of vitamin water. 


Bruise - Day 5. I've named her Ronda.

Once 6:30 rolled up, we headed back to the yoga studio. Because we were told to dress lightly, I wore 3/4 yoga pants, which flauntingly showed off my giant bruise. Not wanting to have to explain how I got injured, I made Swizzy walk behind me at all times to keep the back of my legs out of view of others.

 

We then entered the yoga hot room. As soon as I saw that the door looked like those used to enter saunas, I became worried. As I opened the door, a wave of heat hit me. Now, I was just going to say that the room was holy-fuck-am-I-in-Hell hot, but further research (i.e, Wikipedia) states that the temperature was most likely around  40.6°C (105°F) with a humidity level of 40%. Wikipedia says potato, I say kill me now.

 

We laid out our rented mats next to a ex-coworker of Swizzy's, who asked us how long we had been doing hot yoga. After replying that this was our first time, she looked at us with a mixture of bafflement and pity.

Coworker: You know this is the hardest yoga teacher, right?

Swizzy: Uh, no.  

Coworker: And that this is the 75 minute session?

Me:  Seventy-five minutes?! I'm not gonna last that long without having to pee.

Coworker: Well, I hope you won't, because no one is allowed to leave the room until the session is over. It disrupts others' focus.

And before it could truly sink in that I would have to master my bladder for over an hour (no easy feat for me), the instructor entered the room. At that moment, I had a slight panic attack. What if I pass out? What if I feel like throwing up? What if she actually locks the door so no one can get out? And then what if there's a fire and we all try to get out but the instructor is so hardcore that she's all "work through the pain and find your centre"? Oh God, Death by Yoga.

At this point, I looked at Swizzy like "I'm pretty sure
I saw this in a porno once."

And then we had to make our breathing sound like the ocean and we started doing doing some poses. Some were more well-known poses, such as the warrior pose and the downward dog, some not as well known to the average person like the pigeon pose and the happy baby pose. Within the first 10 minutes, I was completely drenched. It was beyond disgusting.

 

The worst part, other than the heat from the 20 million infrared lamps, the pain and the sweating, was that there was no clocks in the room. As I have no ability to estimate time, at any point in time I had no idea whether we were 15 minutes in or almost done. I would have cried if I had any water left inside my body.

 As I was starting to really get into it (at around 30 minutes in, but I really have no idea), I realized - I have to pee right now! I was guessing the session was far from over, so I decided to try my best to wait until the end. Unfortunately, this took away from my experience because everytime the instructor advised us to "relax all your muscles and feel the tension in them slipping away", I wanted to shout out "lady, if I relax certain muscles right now, you're going to have to deal with a studio full of hot piss. IT WON'T BE PRETTY!" I believe it was at that point that I thought that I had made a terrible mistake in joining a hot yoga class.

Surprisingly, miraculously, I made it through the entire 75 minutes without any incontinence or loss of consciousness. And although I was revoltingly sweaty and exhausted, I felt like a superhero. I strutted down the street in my soggy yoga pants and tank top like I had just climbed Mount Fucking Everest. I was the Stephen Hawkins of yoga. I KICKED HOT YOGA'S NAMASTE-FILLED ASS!

So in honour of my great acheivement, I went home, took a shower and passed out.